If you want a sense of what kind of Lieutenant Governor Matt Denn will be, start by looking at what he has done as Insurance Commissioner.

Matt “transformed the office of Insurance Commissioner” in the words of one newspaper. The News Journal said his plans have been “the most we’ve heard from a Delaware Insurance Commissioner the benefits regular citizens in decades.” His advocacy with insurance companies on behalf of individual Delawareans who were being mistreated earned him thank you notes with comments like, “What do people do, that don’t have a Matt Denn?”

Matt took office in 2005 with three major goals in mind: to bring the cost of insurance under control in Delaware; to make health insurance more available and affordable; and to make sure that Delaware people and businesses were treated fairly by insurance companies, taking on their cases personally if necessary.

Controlling Insurance Rates

In the years before Matt became insurance commissioner, auto insurance companies were raising rates by double digits and not a single application to the Department of Insurance for a rate increase by an auto or home insurance company had been rejected for more than a decade.

Matt inspected auto, homeowner and long-term care rate applications, forcing insurance companies to justify any increases and repeatedly telling companies to reduce a proposed increase or sometimes to keep rates flat. As a result of this scrutiny and other initiatives of the department, like taking the license plates of uninsured motorists, average auto insurance rates from major companies in Delaware have remained flat or even gone down since 2005.

Matt fought against the practice by insurance companies of raising rates on their customers because of changes in their credit history. After two years, Matt and state Senator Margaret Rose Henry overcame insurance industry opposition in Legislative Hall to give Delaware one of the toughest laws in the country when it comes to credit scoring.

On workers compensation insurance that must be purchased by every Delaware business, Matt was part of a group that reformed the state’s workers comp system for the first time in decades, a move that is expected to lower costs and make Delaware more attractive to and affordable for company. And, acting as Commissioner and using the rate review and approval process, Matt kept workers comp insurance rates from going up in 2006 and ordered a 17 percent average cut for most Delaware companies in 2007.

“It’s great that these rates are being scrutinized,” said Rich Kenny, co-owner and chief financial officer of ShopRites of Delaware, in the News Journal when the workers comp rate cut was announced. The rate reductions “will certainly give us some significant savings.”

Health Insurance

Expanding health coverage and making it more affordable has been one of Matt’s main goals, and one which he continues to fight the insurance industry to achieve.

One new law written by Matt and passed by the General Assembly in 2006 has allowed parents to keep children on their family’s health insurance up to age 24. Young adults, who have the highest uninsured rate of any age group, often have jobs without health benefits and purchasing individual health insurance is far out of their reach financially.

“You don’t turn off parenthood at the age of 18,” Joann Haase, health care chair of the League of Women Voters said to the News Journal when the new law took effect. “The availability of this option would give comfort to a lot of families.”

Matt also convinced the General Assembly to pass a law requiring health insurance companies to promptly pay doctors, a measure designed to reduce the costs in doctors’ offices and, hopefully, on patients’ bills.

More than 8,000 children in Delaware are eligible but not enrolled for the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, providing health coverage to working families that can’t afford it, but are not enrolled. Matt has spearheaded efforts to reach out to these families and get them enrolled.

Matt has also fought for more than three years for two measures that would make health insurance more affordable: a statewide health insurance pool for families and businesses struggling to pay for coverage and the ability to review and reject health insurance company rate increases – the same power that he has used to keep auto and workers comp rates down.

Legislation to do both has repeatedly passed the state Senate with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans, but has been blocked from coming up for a vote in the state House of Representatives by health insurance companies, which have the most lobbyists in Dover of any industry.

“Insurance companies don’t like the pool,” wrote News Journal columnist Ron Williams in November 2007, and are “hoping to kill it by fatal procrastination — two years after it was first introduced and debated.”

Matt is still fighting for these health insurance measures to become law in 2008 and, if they do not, he has vowed to keep fighting for them as Lieutenant Governor.

Fighting For Consumers

Matt has worked hard to protect and inform Delaware insurance consumers, including requiring insurance companies to notify homeowners of gaps in their coverage, creating a website to compare auto and homeowner rates from 50 different companies, and increasing fines and penalties against insurance companies that treat consumers unfairly.

But he has also – again and again – intervened personally involved in cases where an insurance company wasn’t living up to its promises, some cases affecting only one family and some affecting thousands. A few grateful notes and emails Matt has received:

• “Without your help, L_____ would have been unable to go to Sloan-Kettering hospital in New York. Sloan Kettering is the only hospital that could provide the treatment L____ required. As of November, L_____ is in remission. It is highly unlikely that remission would have been possible if it were not for your help and God’s. There are so many people that fall through the cracks because they are not aware that there is help through you and your office. We cannot thank you enough for your help.”
• “I don’t know what you did, but whatever happened, you certainly got results! My uncle started receiving checks within two weeks…This has been so hard on all of us, but especially my dear uncle. I hated watching him struggle without any way of helping him and you gave me that way.”
• “My mom received her chemotherapy pills the next morning at 10:00 am. They must have flown the prescription, because I emailed you at 5pm the night before with the problem. Anyway mom was happy. She looked at us and said ‘What do people do, that don’t have a Matt Denn?’”

In at least one instance, Matt’s responsiveness to an individual Delawarean impacted many, many more.

“In July, James Fry of Dagsboro e-mailed Insurance Commissioner Matt Denn about an increase in his homeowner insurance premium that he knew couldn’t be right, in spite of the company’s insistence that it was,” a Department of Insurance news release stated in October 2005. “On Monday, Commissioner Denn said that Mr. Fry’s alertness and an investigation by the Insurance Commissioner’s Office have resulted in an admission by The Hartford insurance company that it owes about 1,400 Delawareans a total of $135,000.”

In August 2005, a contract dispute between Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware and A.I. du Pont Hospital for Children threatened to halt the treatment for more than 4,000 children. Matt stepped in, pointed out each side’s obligations to the young patients, and got in a room with both sides. An agreement was reached nine days before the contract expired.

“Commissioner Denn and his staff, along with officials from the Office of Management and Budget, announced an agreement Thursday night,” a newspaper editorial said. “That was good news for thousands of children and their parents. And it was a good job by Commissioner Denn.”

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All the information, tips, consumer service and news from the Insurance Commissioner’s Office can be found at http://delawareinsurance.gov. (Please note: This link takes you to a state government website not connected to The Denn Campaign.)