Not Voting—1
Runestad
In The Chair: Geiss
Protests
Senators Moss, Cavanagh, McMorrow, Anthony, Wojno and Shink, under their constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against adoption of the amendment offered by Senator Theis to Senate Bill No. 530.
Senator Moss moved that the statement he made during the discussion of the amendment be printed as his reasons for voting “no.”
The motion prevailed.
Senator Moss’ statement, in which Senators Cavanagh, McMorrow, Anthony, Wojno and Shink concurred, is as follows:
I’ve listened to this in committee, I’ve listened to this here, about how, somehow, we’re going to increase rates due to restoring health care in this bill package, and that’s kind of what this amendment seeks to address. We were promised that rates would be reduced as a result of the 2019 law, but I’m still having constituents in my district tell me that their rates increased. In committee, the insurance industry came before us and I asked them, Why is this happening, even though rate relief was promised in the 2019 law? Well, they said, Yeah, your PIP line might have gone down, but other aspects of your bill have increased due to various factors including supply chain, inflation, whatever. So rates are higher now anyways, so the heart of the bill is to restore access to health care, and that is something that I have championed for a very long time, so all this talk about rate relief, we can get real rate relief if we better target the items that are increasing our rates and rein in some of these industry costs.
I don’t think that this amendment achieves anything regarding rate relief, in an attempt to restore health care, if, God forbid, anyone of us should be in a car accident. I urge a “no” vote.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: