The Consumer Federation of America joined fourteen other consumer groups in a letter to the California Department of Insurance, expressing deep concern with recent Department of Insurance actions that create new extra-regulatory hurdles to independent public scrutiny of insurance rates, regulations, and enforcement of the state’s insurance consumer protection laws.

Voters granted consumers the right to monitor insurance companies’ compliance with Proposition 103 as part of the 1988 insurance reform initiative that requires insurance companies to open their books and prove their rates and premiums are reasonable before the Insurance Commissioner can approve them. Prop 103 created the public intervenor process to give consumers a voice in rate oversight, to provide the Commissioner with a diversity of perspectives and expertise, and to act as a check on the Department when the Commissioner is not exercising their own power in consumers’ interests.

Consumers need advocates now more than ever, as they bear the increasing burdens of higher insurance prices, claims-handling delays and unjustified denials, benefit restrictions that devalue policies, and unjustified non-renewals.