Have you asked yourself, why are the insurance companies so adamantly against Referendum Measure 67? Their resolve made me suspicious so I read the text in the State of Washington Voter's Pamphlet and the conclusion is obvious, it is a good bill for us-those of us who buy insurance policies.

I am not a member of any special interest group. I am simply a very curious member of the general public.

The side against R67 is presenting misleading ads and arguments (red herrings such as claims of fraudulent lawsuits, lining pockets of lawyers, and unreasonable threats of stiff rate increases); Chicken Little had better arguments for the sky falling in. However, I agree the side for R67 is doing the same thing. I recently saw and emotional anecdotal sad story about a Puyallup firefighter. While I am not unsympathetic to him and his family, I believe this story is misleading us in terms of R67 making a difference in this case. I believe the side for R67 should fire whoever is creating their ads because the right thing to do does not need to be sensationalized with a misleading story.

R67 will give us insured folks the right to recover attorney fees, litigation costs, and possibly punitive damages up to 3 times the claim amount if we need to sue the insurance company because it unreasonably denied or "low balled" our legitimate claim. Now why is the insurance industry so against us recovering litigation costs on legitimate claims? One argument, it's the increase of fraudulent claims, they say. However, if we lose our case, then we pay our own costs; thus, no extra costs of fraudulent claims to the insurance companies.

Right now, an insurance company can deny, delay, or lowball our legitimate claim. Our only options are to accept their decision, call their customer service, speak with their claims supervisor, or file a lawsuit. It's obvious which side of the table has the most chips.

Clearly, the problem with filing a lawsuit is the costs to us in litigation and attorney's fees. For instance, if we have a legitimate claim of $10,000, the insurance company can deny it with no consequences. We can then go through all of their channels with no relief. The only option left is hiring a lawyer to write a letter at a cost to us. Then, the insurance company can still stall as long as it wants and we can run up a bill of $2-3 thousand dollars. At some point in time, the insurance company can bury us in legal costs so our claim isn't worth our costs anymore, or it can then offer us a lower amount of say $6000 so we "cut our losses" and accept. There is nothing else we can do except write the Insurance Commissioner a letter and have it on file. Big deal, who calls the Commissioner before buying a policy?

Can you imagine that at Christmas time we see that we need extra money for the holidays so we tell the insurance company we will not be making our premium payment; however, they must keep us covered. Our strategy is to hold off for a few months so we can lower our expenses and later negotiate a lower payment so the insurance company can worry about when is it time to settle and "cut their costs." Of course this wouldn't be fair to the insurance companies; however, that's exactly what they can do to us.

All R67 does is provide one tool to help us make the insurance companies honor what they write in our policies that they are so eager to sell us. How can insurance companies be against performing their side of the contract?

I urge you to vote for Referendum Measure 67, because if you do, the insurance companies will have incentive to pay your legitimate claims on time for the fair amount and you won't have to be paying litigation costs or spending sleepless nights determining when to give up and accept a "low balled" claim to "cut your costs."

Rod Mattson can be reached at r-mattson@comcast.net or through his

Website http://www.mattsoncommunication.com