SABIR to Defend State Insurance Regulation

Csiszar says he believes SABIR will have a broad base.

“SABIR’s founding membership spans the industry, representing providers as well as purchasers of insurance products, including health care,” Csiszar says in a statement.

“SABIR will be fundamentally different from other major insurance associations in that we won’t be inclined to support federal regulation,” Bass says. “We were born of the sentiments and frustration from insurers across the nation. They have always operated under state regulation, and the intrusive federal government threatens not only their way of business but their existence as a whole…. SABIR aims to be the collective organ for the protection and promotion of balanced regulation of insurance.”

Congress has given opponents of federal involvement in insurance regulation much food for thought in recent months.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., said in July during a conference call organized by the National Conference of Insurance Legislators, Troy, N.Y., that an optional federal charter (OFC) proposal will be on the congressional agenda in 2011 because the OFC concept has strong bipartisan support.

The federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has created an Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has installed a Federal Insurance Office at the U.S. Treasury Department.