Texas Candidates should support these legislative goals:

• Lowering Texans’ insurance premiums by restoring a workable marketplace where consumers can compare prices between companies based on standard policy forms.  This will force real competition and drive down prices.
• Make insurance companies justify their rates and seek prior approval before implementation.
• Provide transparency in the coverage through the use of plain language in policies.
• Stop insurance industry blackmail or regulators by requiring that any company that withdraws any line of coverage from the Texas market must withdraw for five years. (The Texas market is too big and profitable for them to really leave, but they threaten to, in an attempt to get regulators to back down.)
• Require that companies doing business in Texas offer any and all lines of coverage they offer in other states.  If they withdraw coverage in one line they must withdraw coverage in all lines for five years.
• Passing real tort reform which forces homebuilders, chemical companies, HMOs, insurance companies and other corporate wrongdoers to be more accountable in our Texas courts when their actions cause unnecessary financial or physical harm to Texas families.
• Legislatively check the activist Texas Supreme Court which has been “legislating from the bench” to benefit the insurance companies. They rule 87% of the time with insurance interests – often making “new law” in the effort.
• Require prompt payment of claims.
• Mandate minimum coverage standards for health care policies to reflect the real world of a family’s needs.
• Increase the minimum coverage levels in auto policies to reflect realistic repair and replacement cost for today’s automobiles and to provide adequate coverage for the increased cost of medical care when needed.
• Require insurers and agents to inform customers of the relatively low cost of increasing auto coverage beyond the minimum standards.
• Preventing the insurance industry from using discriminatory and unproven underwriting practices in the insurance marketplace, such as credit scoring and data mining.
• Fighting the corrupting influence of illegal insurance company funding on legislative elections in Texas.