The Heartland Institute

In the mid-1980s, high premium costs and a tidal wave of auto insurance litigation led to vast public outrage against auto insurers. Under California’s referendum process, voters in 1986 narrowly approved Proposition 103, which completely remade the state’s auto insurance system. Insurers were required to roll back their rates ...

There is a well-established consensusamong scholars of insurance regulationthat government regulation of the pricesof insurance products reduces consumerwelfare and stability in the insurancemarketplace. Indeed, a variety of scholarlystudies have been done demonstrating theadverse impact that price controls have oninsurance consumers in ...

In a recent paper entitled "Why Not the Best?" the Consumer Federation of American (CFA) claims to have “researched the results of regulation over the last decade in the 50 states” and concluded that “One state stands out as having the ‘best practices’ in the nation; California, under the remarkably effective provisions of ...

This report was prompted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) decision at their spring meeting of 2001 to consider deregulation of personal lines of property/casualty insurance. In late 1999, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). This allowed banks to sell insurance products. In February 2000 ...

In this paper, we evaluate the effects of regulation in California’s automobile insurance market. Auto insurance is a critical consumer service, so regulation in this market has an important direct impact on consumer welfare. 1 In addition, because regulation in this industry takes place at the level of the state, auto insurance ...

The extent and detail of state regulatory control over the auto insurance industry has increased markedly in the last ten years. In many cases, this change in the regulatory environment has come about as a consequence of well-organized, grass roots, consumer activism. The passage of California's Proposition 103, a voter initiative ...