You really have to hand it to Rep. WILLIAM L. PROCTOR and his fellow Republicans in Tallahassee (and quite a few Democrats too).
Based upon the assumption that the "free market" would somehow regulate insurance rates, the Florida House of Representatives voted yesterday to allow higher property insurance rates, based upon consumer choice rhetoric.
Since 1945, the business of insurance has been exempt from the federal antitrust laws. The McCarran-Ferguson Act exempts insurance rate-fixing from insurance laws. Only insurance boycotts and coercion are covered. See below. The point of McCarran-Ferguson was that the states would regulate insurance rates. For homeowners, our state will now let insurance companies set their own rates. McCarran-Ferguson may soon be repealed, but for Florida legislators to decide this issue in half an hour suggests that they are other-directed nincompoops.
The late great economist, our former Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith put it best when he said the free market is "a snare and a delusion." There is no free market for insurance. Galbraith also said, "one of the most important pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know."
WILLIAM L. PROCTOR does not know any more about economics than an elephant.
WILLIAM L. PROCTOR would not know that insurance is not a free market (and is exempt from federal antitrust laws). Why? Because WILLLIAM L. PROCTOR (meanest man in St. Augustine) is no intellectual, despite his Ph.D. PROCTOR's been a gym teacher and football coach, who now shows signs of having completely lost his marbles (what few he already had, anyway).
WILLIAM L. PROCTOR has never run a business, has never done anything but coach and teach football, administer right-wing schools (like right-wing, anti-labor Flagler College) as narcissistic Republican lord of all he surveys, and give right-wing speeches (PROOCTOR's long been on the Heritage Foundation's list of approved speakers on education).
For Reprobate State Representative WILLIAM L. PROCTOR to take the position that there's a "free market" in insurance suggests that he's either an idiot or so senile that he ought to retire. PROCTOR is a barnacle on the underbelly of the ship of life. It's time for this lugubrious goober to go far, far, far away, along with his girlfriend, to some other place, one where his linguistic malapropisms are better appreciated than here in Florida, where State Farm cancelled everyone's homeowner's insurance policies (a boycott if there ever were one).
Go away and get thee hence, WILLIAM L. PROCTOR, before you do any more damage to the laws of Florida, our beautiful City of St. Augustine, the English language (you are a master of malapropism) and academic freedom (there's no tenure and no unions at Flagler College, and you hate free speech)). Your contribution to the public policy of this state is Orwellian, like something out of 1984.
What do you reckon?
No comments:
Post a Comment