“Father Knows Best” was a popular radio show in the post-World War II era that morphed into an even more popular television series starring actor Robert Young . Young’s character, Jim Anderson, was an insurance company executive — probably the only time American mass media have positively portrayed such a figure. Young later played a much more sympathetic role, a doctor who made house calls, in “Marcus Welby, MD.
” Insurance to indemnify us for liabilities and damages to our homes, cars and businesses is a modern necessity, but consciously or subconsciously we often resent paying for coverage that is seldom invoked. Politicians tend to play on that resentment by promising, if elected, to protect voters from rapacious insurers. In California, that attitude took the form of a 1988 ballot measure , sponsored by a self-designated consumer protection group, that made the state insurance commissioner an elected official with new authority to regulate insurers.
The sponsoring group, Consumer Watchdog, has since been paid millions of dollars in “intervenor fees” for inserting itself into insurance rate cases pending in the Department of Insurance, but it claims to have saved Californians $6 billion. Ever since he launched his 2018 campaign for insurance commissioner, former state Sen. Ricardo Lara has faced sharp criticism from Consumer Watchdog, which denounced him as a tool of the insurance industry.
However Lara has had to contend with an unprecedented crisis in Cal.