John Garamendi: “Well, what happened in proposition 103--and I was the newly elected Insurance Commissioner in 1991 responsible for…”

“Well, what happened in proposition 103--and I was the newly elected Insurance Commissioner in 1991 responsible for implementing the law. The insurance industry had the ability to work together to set rates and to monopolize the market in a way that was in a pattern to be able to have a uniform rate system using what was called rating bureaus. We simply outlawed rating bureaus and forced each company to use its own statistical analysis to set rates. The result was, over a 10-year period, a $30 billion reduction in costs to homeowners and automobile insurance consumers in the State of California. I will tell you this, when you force these companies to compete, when you eliminate their protection from the antitrust laws, you will see a significant rate decrease. And when you have a company such as Blue Cross, that dominates a segment of the market, that is what is outlawed under the normal antitrust laws of this Nation.”