Nikki Cuddles Up While We Pay Up

So who among us is surprised that Governor Haley wants to appoint an insurance industry lobbyist to run the state insurance agency?

Scandal is no stranger to Governor Haley, and no more so than in her relationship with the insurance industry.

In 2011, after less than one year, David Black resigned the post.  With no official statement it was nonetheless not hard to jump to the conclusion that he was reluctant to be the fall guy on Haley's Health Planning Committee, which spent a million dollars in federal health care reform grant money for the purpose of determining that South Carolina would not participate in the health exchange.  In Nikki's own words, the directive to the committee was:

"the whole point of this commission should be to figure out how to opt out and how to avoid a federal takeover, NOT create a state exchange."


Not hard to understand why Mr. Black was unable to stomach the workings of the Haley administration.  Also easy to understand Haley's move in nominating Ray Farmer this time around.  AIA is absolutely tickled that this 32 year insurance insider is now going to the government side.

Fortunately, there has been a bit closer scrutiny of this nominee, but who among us will be surprised when Mr. Farmer gets the green light?

Meanwhile, if you spend much of your free time reeling from the high cost of all kinds of insurance premiums, too many of which are higher than claims and conditions in the state would warrant, our state government is hard at work to get you to stop griping.

No, they are NOT going to challenge the insurance industry.  What they WILL do is give you a tax credit to offset those too large premiums.  That's right folks, instead of getting the wealthy and powerful insurance industry to lower their premiums (and hence, their profit), our state is going to give us back some of our tax dollars.  That's less money for schools and teachers, roads and bridges, police officers, libraries, hospitals, colleges.

So check out the Excess Insurance Premium Credit, brought to you by Governor Nikki Haley, who loves nothing better than using your tax dollars to keep industry fat and happy.