John Oxendine, Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner, addressed members and guests at the Madison Forum luncheon meeting, May 14, 2007.
Mr. Oxendine praised the Madison Forum and said it is the bedrock of our society, The concept has been with us since ancient Greece, and been perfected, and it is what makes the United States different from so many other places. People get together, they talk abut ideas, they talk about how they want to be governed, how they should be governed, what’s god about how they are governed, what’s bad about the way they’re governed, and they don’t have to worry about offending anybody. If it offends somebody, you don’t have to worry about the police coming and arresting you and put you in jail.
Mr. Oxendine explained that he is Insurance Commissioner and Fire Commissioner. The state fire marshal is his deputy. He said he regulates most areas of insurance except health insurance. Most of the large companies, such as Lockheed and Home Depot, are self insured under Federal Law, so they don’t come under the jurisdiction of his office. State merit, health benefit plans, school teachers and university employees come under a state self-insured plan. Federal and state programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid are also self-insured plans. PeachCare comes under Medicaid because they handle welfare. Basically, the health care his office handles is small business and family insurance bought from an agent.
He said he approves homeowner’s rates. If you are unhappy about your rate, you can call his office. He pointed out that Georgia has the lowest homeowner’s rates in the Southeast. In rating homeowner’s insurance he looks at geographic areas where climate, building conditions and expenses are similar. For automobiles, they look at the size of the state. Georgia is the ninth largest state in the country and has the second lowest car insurance rate of the top ten states. He also said Georgia has one of the more vibrant, competitive Workmen’s Comp markets in the country, and his office feels very happy about that.
Mr. Oxendine said that what his office really does is try to look at rates, look at company’s practices to make sure people are treated right. The other is what government really needs to do is not always run peoples’ lives, not always regulate, not always tell people what to do; it’s just to help families. He said he thinks that’s the best purpose of government. People ask him how he can be a regulator and a conservative. He said there is an exception of every rule, and we do need some regulation in the insurance business, because someone has to keen an eye on them. But that is not his main concentration. His main concentration is helping folks. He said, when you call his office, you don’t get a busy signal. When you call, you get a live human being answering the phone. He said when he first took over the office they had machines. He took them all out. If people are paying taxes, they have a right to talk to a live human being. Also, the office is open from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm. When asked why he did that, he said he couldn’t figure out why government offices closed at 4:30 if we are the boss. People who are busy making money to pay his salary, and maybe can’t make personal calls during the day, need access to government agencies. He pointed out that it took three days to get his son’s learner’s permit because the DMV office closes at 4 pm, but they don’t let anyone in after 3 pm. The same thing happens at the Social Security Office. He said his philosophy is that if you call at one minute to seven they will stay on the line with you until eight if necessary. He said if he had the authority all government agencies in the state and the whole country would work extended hours for the convenience of the people who pay their salaries.
Mr. Oxendine said that last year his agency collected about 22 million dollars just helping everyday people with their problems, such as - the insurance company won’t pay my claim, won’t approve a medical procedure for my condition, offered $10,000 for a car accident, and I think it should be $15,000; the agency will intervene, take you through, and try to get the case resolved to make you happy. If you’re not happy, you get a lawyer and sue.
He says his whole philosophy of government is helping families, and that’s why he enjoys what he does. What he’s been doing these last few years is being accessible, helping people with real everyday problems.
Mr. Oxendine feels that one of the biggest problems we have with government is, everybody is always concerned with themselves. Looking at the recent legislative session, a lot of people seemed to be concerned with their own political ambitions, looking at their own careers, looking at their own statements, and were actually forgetting what was right for the people of the state. That’s kind of the difference between a politician and a statesman. He said economic development is a prime example. Whenever economic development comes up, governors for years of both political parties would say ….I want to build this factory because I’m up for re-election in a couple of years, and I want to hurry up and get it open so when it’s election time, I can say …look what I did, I got this factory in your community. That’s good. We want factories. But maybe we also need to be saying …is this factory going to be open 20 years from now? Because most of the industry you open right now, it may not be here in 20 years. It’s going to go to Mexico. It’s going to go to China. It’s going to go somewhere else. Maybe we need to say…let’s not just try to compete with them, because we can’t in a lot of areas. Let’s focus on the areas that the Chinese and the Mexicans, and other countries can’t do. Let’s focus on the jobs they won’t take from us. But you have to build an infrastructure for that. You have to really think 20 years down the road. But the problem is a lot of politicians don’t want to. They want to focus on today …because, you know, if I set a good foundation for something that might not bear fruit for 20 years, and that our children and grandchildren would get to enjoy, by God some other politician may take credit for it. That would be terrible. And that’s what a lot of people think. He said he thinks a statesman is going to say…let’s help people now, but helping people now is making sure that we have the right economy for our kids and grandkids. Mr. Oxendine said he doesn’t see that so often, and it concerns him
Mr. Oxendine said he thinks the state of Georgia is at a fork in the road. We really have to decide where we are going to go in the future. He said we have been growing and prospering for so long in spite of ourselves. We have Atlanta as a great economic engine. People are leaving the rust belt and the cold and coming south. It hasn’t taken brain surgery in the past to have a good ripening economy in our state. In the future it’s going to, because all these other states are saying… we’ve got to be scared of China and Mexico, India, and everybody else. We’ve got to look to the future, and, he says, he doesn’t as much of it happening here as it should. He said he thinks Governor Purdue has started that process of looking down the road more so than in the past, but it still has a long way to go, and he says he is afraid we might get beat by other states. Other states are desperately planning ahead in a lot of ways we are not. Economically we may wake up and find out we are not the Empire State of the South like we were taught in grade school, and he says it really concerns him.