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July 15, 2008 at 09:11 PM
State legislators say they want to forge stronger ties with state insurance regulators but are disappointed with the regulators’ position on the proposed federal Office of Insurance Information.
The lawmakers appeared with regulators here at the summer meeting of the National Conference of Insurance Legislators, Troy, N.Y.
In June, an official from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Kansas City, Mo., testified at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee capital markets subcommittee that the NAIC was giving the OII bill “conditional support,” as long as the powers granted to the OII were not expanded during the legislative process.
The NAIC feels it has to participate in any discussions about an OII bill so that it will not be “shut out of the discussion,” said West Virginia Insurance Commissioner Jane Cline, an NAIC vice president.
Rather than letting the “camel’s nose” of federal regulation under the tent, offering conditional support for the OII bill is a way to prevent the camel’s nose from becoming larger, Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, the NAIC president, said at another meeting session.
But state Rep. Brian Kennedy, D-Hopkinton, R.I., the president of NCOIL said he was baffled by the NAIC’s conditional support for a bill that could pre-empt state insurance regulation.
