NAIC responds to CREW's concerns about Stephen Moses and the Center for Long-Term Care
Last month, CREW wrote to the the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC)and the National Association of State Medicaid Directors (NASMD) concerning Stephen Moses and the Center for Long-Term Care Reform and his planned “National Long-Term Care Consciousness Tour.” Moses has spent the past decade posing as an independent expert from a respected think tank that analyzes the need for long-term care insurance, but is in fact serving as a front for the long-term care insurance industry. Our letters can be found here. We want to make sure that any state insurance commissioners or Medicaid directors who meet with Mr. Moses should at least be aware that he is not an independent voice, but rather is paid to express the views of the long-term care insurance industry.
We received a response from NAIC. Mr. Moses and his group are not working with that organization, we've been told:
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Generic reply letter from the NAIC
OF COURSE the NAIC would not be the primary target of any contact from Stephen Moses or from the Center for Long Term Care Reform! They contact individual agencies and commissioners instead of the National association.
These guys are clever and know EXACTLY how to best achieve their goals and believe me, since insurance is regulated on a state by state basis, that is where they will be using the help of Stephen Moses and his very well-concealed lobbying efforts on behalf of insurers.
I'll bet they have at least 5 or 6 "Astroturf Advocacy" websites that extol the virtues of their version of how LTC should be regulated and I'll bet Stephen Moses' "studies" are part of those fake and supposedly consumer-oriented websites.
One of the ones they used in Texas for "Insurance Reform" (an insurer-publicized term for a campaign to increase premiums and reduce coverage) was a site called "TCAIS.org" or the Texas Coalition for Affordable Insurance Solutions.
When you dug deep enough you were able to discover that the home page's picture of the happy family on the porch of a home was simply a cover that put a "consumer's face" in front of the public instead of showing the names of the three or four major insurers and one insurance trade association that really funded the site.
AND it took them months of being online before they made the ownership of the site easy to find. The contact person who received the emails sent to the site? A lobbyist for the insurance industry. LOL
You've got to get up very early in the morning to follow the insurance industry's constant efforts to subvert regulation and to spin "research". Just like they bamboozled us with credit scoring, they could sell a flat Earth. When there are plenty of greedy legislators and those who appoint or elect Insurance Commissioners to benefit from insurer lobbying, the consumer gets the shaft.
The liability insurance premium "crisis" was another example of insurer lies. Malpractice Insurance jury awards DIDN'T EVEN KEEP PACE WITH INFLATION during the time they were claiming awards from frivolous lawsuits were to blame for rising malpractice premiums.
The REAL reason, sloppy underwriting practices that re-insured repeat offender docs who were largely incompetent AND the single most important reason for higher premiums - poor investment income after the Dot Com crash.
Raising premiums to cover investment losses is prohibited by most state insurance codes so they HAD to lie about why they needed to raise premiums!
If an insurer's lips are moving.......well, you fill in the blank.
I am hoping CREW follows up with the individual commissioners and sends ALL of them a copy of their letter warning them about Moses and the LTC lobby sneakily named the Center for Long Term Care Reform.
Isn't it QUAINT how the insurers picked the word "REFORM" in both the Texas lobbying blitz (the Texas efforts were headlined as calling for "Meaningful Insurance Reform") and in naming this LTC "astroturf advocacy" or "front" group.
It has that "consumer" RING to it, doesn't it?