Secure Arkansas

Dear Friends,

Unfortunately we have another BAD bill that needs to be killed before this session is over: HB1907.  This is a bill that would make it even harder on injured Arkansans to recover their losses!

Secure Arkansas does not know when this bill will run in the House Insurance & Commerce committee, but we need to contact the committee members and try to stop the votes right now! At the bottom of this email, we have included a listing of everyone on the committee. Every single member on this committee needs to be contacted this week.  Please call, email, and/or text all twenty committee members. 

The general public and our lawmakers need to be made aware of the harm it will cause to injured Arkansans (see the numbered points below), and asked to vote “no” when this bill runs.  Please let us know of the committee members that want this BAD bill to pass. You need to act quickly, folks!

Stop this BAD bill in its tracks! Don’t let this happen to you or any member of your family if you ever happen to get injured and assume that your insurance agency will take care of everything … after all, you have faithfully kept your insurance policy paid, or so you thought.  Don’t let YOUR money be all locked up! 

HB1907 How bad is it?
Sponsor: Rep. Micah Neal

1. This Bill requires ordinary people who purchase insurance with their hard-earned dollars to act as “collections agencies” for those same insurance companies.  If a person is injured in a car wreck and their insurance company pays medical bills just as the contract they paid for with the insurance company requires, the insurance company can sweep back in and take back those payments when the person who hit them pays for the wreck.  So, the injured person gets nothing for the insurance policy they paid for and the insurance company gets a windfall.  Talk about a double casualty!
2. What’s more, the insurance company gets to use the efforts of these ordinary people as collection agencies for free.  The insurance company does not have to pay ANYTHING to the injured person or their attorney for pursuing a case against the other driver who caused the injury.  Once again, the insurance company gets a windfall, and the ordinary person foots the bill.
3. The redefining of “made whole” for cases where it still applies is unfair to both plaintiffs and defendants because cases will not be settled.  An injured person who enters into a settlement is presumed to be made whole from the settlement, irrespective of the realities of the case.  For example, a person who is injured to a significant degree, say over $25,000 (the price of a moderate new car) by a driver who has only $25,000 in coverage, is a minimum wage worker, and who has no assets at all cannot accept the $25,000 in coverage, all that they can reasonably ever get, because doing so will create a presumption of being made whole.  Thus, the person who has no real assets will be forced to trial because the injured person cannot risk the made whole presumption. 
4. This scenario repeats itself in many areas.  Where a medical insurer pays any money under a bought-and-paid-for policy, and the patient recovers from someone else, the insurance company gets to use the patient as a free collection agency and take money back, even though the patient or the patient’s employer paid for the policy. The same applies if the policy of insurance is homeowner’s insurance and any number of other insurance policies.  HAVE YOU EVER TRIED TO PROCESS A CLAIM?
5. The bottom line is that HB1907 allows insurance companies to take premiums and pay for nothing.  And yes, this looks like double dipping!

This sounds like an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bill modified to fit Arkansas’ statutory laws to us. Remember, ALEC tries to pass these bad laws in almost every state possible!  So, don’t sit back and let our state fall victim to this harmful bill!

ACTION: Please contact these twenty members (Representatives) of the House Insurance & Commerce committee and encourage them to vote NO on HB1907.  It’s a BAD bill for Arkansas!

Listed directly below are the email addresses for all 20 committee members in case you’d like to email them all at once.  You may need to separate them with a comma or semi-colon, etc. depending on your email service. (Some email service providers add the comma or semicolon for you after you’ve copied/pasted.) These are Arkansas Representatives, so be sure to address them as such.

brent.talley@arkansashouse.org

john.baine@arkansashouse.org

bruce.cozart@arkansashouse.org

jtvines13@sbcglobal.net

fjlove@att.net

sorvillo4house@gmail.com

markdlowery@mac.com

jfarrer@suddenlink.net

jeremy@growing45.com

rkm_72360@yahoo.com

marshall.wright@arkansashouse.org

deborah.ferguson@arkansashouse.org

joe.jett@arkansashouse.org

scottbaltz@yahoo.com

bill@billgossage.com

clcollins6@cox.net

greg.leding@arkansashouse.org

robin.lundstrum@arkansashouse.org

micah.neal@arkansashouse.org

grant.hodges@arkansashouse.org

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