Anyone know what's happening with the insurance/credit scoring measure?

[liberalhistorian]

I live in SD, but I was very curious to read recently that OR has a measure on the ballot that would prohibit insurance companies in the state from using credit information and scoring to set rates. I am adamantly against that ridiculous, senseless, anti-consumer policy, and am very interested in knowing how that's going so far, what the numbers are.

Apparently, the insurance industry is pouring biggo bucks (of course!) into the state to defeat the measure, and I really, desperately hope it doesn't succeed. There's no factual basis for such a practice, it's economically discriminatory, and gives premium breaks to those who don't deserve or need it. Rates should be set on your driving record ONLY, period. Your stupid credit report should having NOTHING to do with it.

[sandnsea]

1. It's Bill Sizemore's

so ads have been running to vote against it for that reason alone. And sadly, like the good sheeple the left can be too, they're buying right in. I'd bet it won't pass and it's sad because it's one of the most unfair things we do to low income people. Credit shouldn't have anything at all to do with insurance.

[liberalhistorian]

2. You're kidding, it's actually gonna pass?

Christ, WTF is WRONG with people? Don't they see just how wrong and damaging such a policy is and that it can affect them as well, if they go through a rough patch financially?

On edit: Who is Bill Sizemore? I'm sorry, I don't live in OR, so I don't know.

[sandnsea]

3. Well

The legislation is to make it illegal to base insurance on credit scores, so we actually DO want it to pass. Or at least I do.

Bill Sizemore is just a fuckhead. For years now he has been putting tax initiatives on the ballot, passed the property tax cap. His 'cut tax' insanity has just gutted our schools and health care budget. I can understand the reaction, but this particular legislation is actually good. If he's switched his attack on corporations, he might actually do some good.

[mcking]

5. Even a broken clock is right

two times a day. That's how I feel about Sizemore and this measure.

[0rganism]

4. I tend to agree with you about the anti-Sizemore backlash

Now, if Dan Meek had been the one behind that same measure, we'd be seeing the debate lines drawn in the usual way and it'd be about 50-50 for it passing or not. But having Sizermore as the chief petitioner, it loses support from the people who would usually back such a thing due to prior experience, and the big spenders who usually back Sizemore's tax-slashing crap won't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

[liberalhistorian]

6. So, what happened with the vote?

I'm almost afraid to ask, but I'm really curious as I have a real interest in not just this issue, but the overly-broad use of credit reports and scoring and the detrimental affect of such use.

[0rganism]

7. voted down, 65-35

http://egov.sos.state.or.us/division/elections/results/2006_G100_all_results.htm

State Ballot Measure No. 42
PROHIBITS INSURANCE COMPANIES FROM USING CREDIT SCORE OR "CREDIT WORTHINESS" IN CALCULATING RATES OR PREMIUMS
Results by County

  	Yes Votes 	458,669 	35.26%
  	No Votes 	842,115 	64.74%
  	Total 	1,300,784 	 

[liberalhistorian]

8. Shit! I just can't believe anyone in their

right mind would actually vote against it! I thought Oregonians were a lot smarter than that and would be able to see through the well-funded bullshit industry spin.

[sandnsea]

9. Oh not really

We voted down a single payer type plan in 2002. We voted for a stupid stupid land use plan in 2004. Only one county voted against the gay marriage ban in 2004. We voted for more logging on one of our most cherished forests that is the watershed for Portland. That's what makes me a little kooky about some of our more radical DUers, it's as if they don't even look at the votes in their own states. I think we've finally backed away from radical religiosity and tax cut fever, but it's been a battle for a long time.

[Stargazer09]

10. I voted for the measure

But it obviously didn't help much. Of course, I don't know Bill Sizemore from anybody else, so I saw no reason to vote against it based on who authored the legislation. To me, it was silly of people to vote against it simply because they didn't like who wrote it. I thought it was a perfectly good thing.

[0rganism]

11. See, here's the problem....

You say, "I don't know Bill Sizemore from anybody else"

A lot of the people who voted against it DO know Bill Sizemore from anybody else, and were thinking, "What's the angle?"

I think I found his angle -- now that Sizemore's racked up a whole bunch of backlogged debt, his own credit is shit, and he's pissed off at the high cost of insurance. Understanding is not the same as sympathy, of course; I hope his entire operation bites the dust this year. Next time around, get someone with public interest credibility to push the measure, and it'll run stronger.

See, many of the people who usually back Sizemore's tax-slashing bullshit were his major opponents on this, and at the same time, he failed to win support from the people on the other side of the fence who could have helped him campaign. The most conspicuous thing about the campaign for the measure was its relative absence; this is highly unusual for Sizemore's stuff, which usually gets backing from at least some of the big spenders. I didn't see so much as a newspaper ad in its favor, a marked contrast from the typical media circus that surrounds his legislation. Nor was there a ground game worth mentioning. He completely failed to make the case, which very much deserves to be made -- but who was going to help him?

Sizemore's been kicking the low-income advocacy dog for a long time, and now he wants it to fetch? Well, it might just do that, but not for him.

[Stargazer09]

12. Okay, I think I get the picture

Basically, the guy is a jerk, and no matter what he pushes, people will vote against it just because of him?

It's sad that this measure got voted down, because I really thought it was a good idea. I mean, nobody has perfect credit (well, maybe my young children do), and tying credit scores to insurance rates doesn't make much sense to me. After all, what real connection is there between my near-perfect driving record and my fondness for credit cards?

I'm really glad that I found this forum. Being displaced from home makes it difficult to follow local politics.

Thank you for your explanation! :D

[0rganism]

14. I'm not sure you do -- it's not that he's a "jerk" per se...

> Basically, the guy is a jerk, and no matter what he pushes, people will vote against it just because of him?

No, your missing an important distinction. Bill Sizemore is famous for a reason. When he puts his anti-tax crap on the ballots, he gets his 50%, give or take, depending. Some of his ideas have been wildly successful at disrupting Oregon's revenues, causing widespread cutbacks. What I'm trying to convey to you is that this measure was the red-headed stepchild of the 2006 ballot. Any ballot measure bigger than a local library bond needs a few powerful friends to push it through, and this one didn't have any. The rich capitalists didn't like its content, and while I'd like to say Sizemore burnt his bridges to the liberal activists long ago, it's more accurate to say that he didn't have any such bridges to begin with.

Look back a few election cycles to 1998, and see who the GOP candidate for governor was. Look at what his organization did to Oregon's budget with the help of Loren Parks and Norquist's K-Street thugs over the last 12 years or so. Now tell me how he's going to get anyone to support a progressive ballot measure.

> what real connection is there between my near-perfect driving record and my fondness for credit cards?

The insurance industry claims there's a correllation, but it's second-order, and statistical.

At first glance, there's no direct tie between having lousy credit and your driving record. Why should you pay more for car insurance or home-owners' insurance or life insurance or medical insurance just because your credit rating sucks? That's just blatantly unfair.

But then, some industry actuaries run the numbers, and maybe they start finding that people who have lousy credit also have more auto accidents or house fires or shorter life spans or chronic medical conditions, and in order to make their usual payoff margins, they should charge more for that, too. They can either charge the person buying the insurance directly, or distribute the risk across the board to all their clients. That's their argument. I'm not saying anything about how sound their statistical analysis is, or how much the costs really are -- the issue on the ballot was qualitative, not quantitative. But the insurance companies made this argument, and they made it widely known.

Now, whose job was it to do comparable advocacy for the ballot measure that would eliminate this practice? I can tell you this much: you won't push this through without publishing some analysis of what the overall impact to insurance underwriting would be, as distributed across the customer base statewide. And when I say "publishing", I mean "running the numbers on a media campaign comparable to what the insurance industry was running to defeat the measure". I don't know how well Sizemore planned for this, but I know I never saw diddly shit from Yes-on-42 in the mass media. In other words, their campaign got the old industry smackdown from the same people who usually back Sizemore's measures.

[liberalhistorian]

13. I don't live in OR so I don't know Sizemore from Adam,

but I'm very interested in these kinds of issues, especially the broader use of credit ratings far beyond the scope of what they were originally intended to be used for. They were never meant to be used for anything other than lending and loan purposes, certainly not employment or insurance purposes. There are so many things wrong with using credit ratings for anything beyond lending that I don't even know where to begin, besides the fact that a lot of the methods used to determine credit ratings are arbitrary and bogus, and a lot of information in credit files is simply wrong or inaccurate, AND there's no consideration of the CONTEXT of a particular piece of negative credit information (medical bills for serious illness, job loss, etc.).

I wonder if there's a way I could get such a measure on my own state's ballot? Also, I am strongly, adamantly against medical bills going on credit reports, for many obvious reasons. That's another thing we can thank St. Ronnie of Raygoon for, since he allowed it.

[0rganism]

15. You can't understand why the measure failed without understanding the context

Doing so will be even more important if you decide to go to the trouble of putting something like this on the ballot in your state. You have to have a plan for dealing with an insurance industry that will outspend you 2-to-1 or more to defeat the measure. If you don't have the media on your side, you have to have a ground game, and that means you need allies, preferably multitudinous of dedicated volunteer allies with free time for lots of door-to-door canvassing and a line on budget minivan rentals. And you have to have your talking points lined up -- that means you have to have some actuaries of your own on staff to run the numbers, so you can fight any disinformation that comes down the pipe.

Now I don't know you from Ralph Nader; for all I know, you might already have something like this set up. What I do know is that Sizemore was the wrong man to lead the drive for this one. His game is all air: expensive out-of-state-funded media blitzes that look homegrown are his specialty, and he leverages the natural self-interest of greedy fatcats to fund a framing of the debate on his terms. In this case, Sizemore didn't get the backing for his air game because the big money wasn't on his side, and his ground game was too weak to compensate.

Look at the returns I posted, too, and cross-ref with the votes for congresscritters and some other ballot measures, especially 44. Measure 42 had very favorable turnout demographics this time around -- probably the best they've been in decades -- but the insurance industry defeated it easily.