What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Los Angeles is at a turning point. We are living in a defining moment. What happens next is up to us. Over the past few years, problems and challenges have shaken this city -- and tremendous opportunities for change have presented themselves. How do we rise to this moment and emerge a better place to live? What will it take to create a more just and a more equitable community? Working together, how are we going to create a stronger, forward-thinking Los Angeles? Mike Bonin, writer, teacher, progressive activist and former City Councilmember, looks at the issues and problems facing Los Angeles, examines ideas, and talks with the people who will lead us to a brighter future.
Produced in partnership with LA Forward.
What's Next, Los Angeles? with Mike Bonin
Candidate Spotlight: JANE KIM for Insurance Commissioner
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There may be no statewide race on this year's ballot with more direct impact on your wallet than this one. Make no mistake: the insurance commissioner regulates the nation's biggest insurance market, and the next one takes office in a full-blown crisis. The January 2025 fires in Los Angeles County damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 homes and killed 31 people, and families across the state are being dropped by insurers or priced out. And for the first time since the office became elected, two Democrats will face each other in November. Kim, Allen lead in California insurance watchdog race +2
I sat down separately with both candidates. In this episode, I talk with Jane Kim about homeowners insurance, auto insurance, and health insurance, and how she would defend consumers against an industry that too often puts profits first.
About Jane Kim
Kim served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2011 to 2019, where she helped make San Francisco the only city in the nation offering tuition-free community college to all residents, and passed a tax on high-value commercial real estate to fund universal affordable childcare. Before that, she served on the San Francisco school board, including as its president. After leaving office, she was California Political Director for Bernie 2020, and has spent the last four years as California Director of the Working Families Party. She holds a B.A. from Stanford and a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law. She is endorsed by Bernie Sanders and SEIU California, and she finished first in the June primary.
Links
- Jane Kim's campaign: janekim.org
- Ben Allen's campaign: benallenca.com
- LAist: California insurance commissioner: Who's running and why it matters
- CalMatters Voter Guide: Insurance Commissioner
- CalMatters: California insurance commissioner race is set: Kim vs. Allen
- CalMatters: Will California vote 'progressive' in insurance commissioner race?
What's Next, Los Angeles? is produced and hosted by Mike Bonin, in partnership with LA Forward.
Your insurance company just raised your rates, or dropped you, or denied your claim. Who's supposed to stand up for you? That's the California State Insurance Commissioner. I talk with candidate Jane Kim on this episode of What's Next, Los Angeles. Hey everybody and welcome. It's Mike Bonnen. Thank you for joining me. We continue our election series. And today we talk about California State Insurance Commissioners race. Ask Californians what keep them up at night, and a lot of people, for homeowners, their insurance is high on the list. In a recent poll, 62% of voters said they were very concerned about the cost of home insurance. And 43% said they had no confidence at all that California's insurance system could withstand future extreme weather disasters. One state official plays a central role in regulating that system, the insurance commissioner. The commissioner heads the California Department of Insurance, which regulates insurers, reviews insurance rates, and handles consumer complaints. Under Proposition 103, insurers generally have to get state approval before they can implement rate increases for homeowners and other property and casualty insurance. That office is open this year. Ricardo Lara is term limited, and eleven candidates ran to replace him in the June top two primary. Jane Kim finished first, receiving 27.4% of the vote. Jane served on the San Francisco Board of Education, including as its president, before representing District 6 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2011 to 2019. As a supervisor, she pushed for free tuition at City College and offered Proposition W, a tax on high-end real estate transfers that helped fund the college. She later ran for state senate and for mayor of San Francisco. She served as California political director for Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, and she became the first state director for the California Working Families Party. In this race, Kim has pledged not to accept money from the insurance industry, and she has proposed a public disaster insurance for all program aimed at providing coverage when disasters such as fires, floods, or earthquakes strike. Jane Kim, thanks for joining me. And what's next, Los Angeles?
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much for having me.
SPEAKER_00Good to have you here. You are running for California State Insurance Commissioner. And before we get into your platform, before we get into sort of what qualifies you for the job, uh the first question I want to ask is for people who are not familiar, because it's not the most well-known office in the world, is uh what does insurance commissioner do? What power does the commissioner have and not have?
SPEAKER_01So I like to say I'm running for one of the most important jobs you may have not heard of, California Insurance Commissioner. And this office oversees a $3.3 trillion industry, which has zero federal oversight. And this industry is doing very well. It made $170 billion net last year. Their top 10 CEOs made $391 million. And meanwhile, we consumers are very well regulated. We are required to have insurance to drive to work or to school, to qualify for a mortgage, to buy first home, to open a business, or even a nonprofit of any kind. So we have to make insurance affordable and available. Otherwise, we're shutting everyday Californians out of our economy. And that's what's already happening. The premiums are too high. They're canceling our coverage. And even if we have insurance, they fight our claims every step of the way. So this office is the only backstop between us, working families, everyday consumers, and this trillion dollar industry.
SPEAKER_00And what power does the job actually have?
SPEAKER_01So this office was created in 1980 by the voters of California. And it has three primary functions. One is it licensed who gets to do business in the largest insurance market in the country. And that's a huge authority that I don't think has been very well leveraged. Number two, um, they um approve or reject rate increases or decreases and ensure that rates are neither inadequate, excessive, or discriminatory. And that's actually very important. We can talk about that later. And then third, this office is an enforcement agency, it's a civil rights agency, it enforces the good laws of California. And I'll give one example. California is one of three states in the country that has banned the use of credit score in calculating your premiums. Because what does your credit credit score have to do with the risk of your home? Right. Right? Not like a mortgage where we need you to pay every month. Um, if you stop paying, they've just stopped covering you. And so, but this office has to ensure that that law is being followed. And and we don't know. So this this office also has a huge investigation enforcement art and interestingly has a SWAT team.
SPEAKER_00A what team?
SPEAKER_01A SWAT team.
SPEAKER_00And what does SWAT stand for in that in that context?
SPEAKER_01It will, um, I don't know if raid is the right word, but if you are violating certain laws and they feel like it is necessary to bring them in, they they come.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Tell people who are not familiar, tell voters, tell listeners who you are and why you argue you are qualified to hold this position.
SPEAKER_01I spent 12 years as an elected legislator in the city and county of San Francisco, where I served on the Board of Supervisors and School Board. And I'm really proud to have worked on landmark legislation, like making San Francisco the only city to make community college tuition free again, um, passing the largest investment in early childhood education in the state, negotiating more affordable and middle-income housing than any California legislator at the time. And this is the energy that I want to bring to this under-the-radar, under-leveraged office that I really believe could be a powerful platform and champion for working families. Um I also spent six years as a community organizer and also as a civil rights attorney doing voting rights acts uh work. And the last um five years, I've been organizing statewide, um, starting originally as the California political director for Senator Bernie Sanders and his race for president, where we came in first place in 47 out of 53 congressional districts. And then finally, um, the last four years as the California Director of Working Families Party, where we are building a corporate-free electoral infrastructure to win candidates from school board to US Congress, and when they win, to help support governance. So, doing actually a lot of consumer advocacy around tenants' rights in affordable groceries, utilities, affordable bills. Um, this is the work that we're engaged in. And so I bring all of this to the insurance commissioner's office, um, both my statewide organizing experience, my legislative experience, and um my experience as a local organizer and attorney.
SPEAKER_00So let me ask a few questions about uh insurance, the way consumers experience it. And so let me start with with health insurance, uh, something that's that's on almost everybody's mind uh all the time. Um my understanding is that the insurance commissioner um uh can review rate hikes there, but you can't block them the same way you can with homeowners insurance and and auto insurance. So um uh what do you do about uh having that that sort of gap in authority? And what's your what's your agenda to help uh uh patients and people uh in consuming healthcare?
SPEAKER_01So California is the only state that has bifurcated managed health care plans out of the Department of Insurance. So in 49 other states, this office does oversee managed health care plans. Um but as you noted, um it can it can study health care, it can put out proposals, it can um have positions that it brings to the state legislature and to the governor's office, but it doesn't directly oversee managed health care plan. But I do believe that this office has a tremendous amount of resources to put forward policy positions or even to draft policies. So part of my platform is to drop the plan to make Medicare for kids a reality here in California. And this is, by the way, not my idea. It was first proposed by a Californian Republican named Richard Nixon when he ran for president. So I want to make that Republican vision a reality here in the city of California. I believe that every young Californian should be guaranteed health care and that the wealthiest state in the wealthiest nation can afford to do this.
SPEAKER_00All right. Uh let's ask about auto insurance. Uh in LA, auto insurance is a big deal because we're we're still unfortunately a car city. Um uh people hate dealing with auto insurance. They always say it's too expensive. They say their insurance companies are a pain in the ass dealing with claims and all that. Um, you have much more authority over the auto insurance industry. Uh, what's what's your agenda there?
SPEAKER_01So, first I want to expand California's already existing low-cost nonprofit auto insurance program and expand the number of Californians who are eligible to participate. Um, auto insurance is, by the way, a very lucrative industry. Every insurer wants to be a part of it. And I think that it is a lever that this office can use more effectively. So, one of my proposals is to not allow businesses to cherry pick which business that they provide. If they provide auto insurance in your zip code, they have to provide home insurance as well.
SPEAKER_00That's that's that's not the case right now, right?
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_00Uh, and you expect a lot of pushback on that? Or is that something where you have the ability to sort of implement that on your own?
SPEAKER_01I think it'd be a a mix of a negotiation, but we would be leveraging our ability to license who does business in the state of California. Right. And so again, if you provide auto insurance in a zip code, I believe that you should provide home insurance as well. And you shouldn't be able to cherry pick which risk um you want to be in the business of covering. The whole concept of insurance as a business is that you're in the business of risk. And what we've seen over particularly in the last couple of decades is insurance going out of the business of insuring. So, insurance when it was invented by people millennia, it was a way, it was a tool that we devised to distribute risk in communities. So it was actually a form of mutual aid. So the earliest forms of insurance that we're aware of are Roman soldiers who would pool a percentage of their wages every month, put it aside, and should a member of their battalion be killed, they would send a little bit of money to the family. Here in California, farmers used to create collectives and they would pool some of the resources at the beginning of the harvest because inevitably one farmer would lose their crops to something unpredictable like flood or um pests.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_01So it was always this idea of no one will be destitute in our community. Fast forward to 2026, it is now one of the most profitable, one of the most speculative industries in the world. And the whole concept of insurance was to take on and protect the most vulnerable. But what we see today in the insurance market is that they try to keep, I'm gonna use the healthcare analogy, so they try to keep all the healthy homes, all the healthy patients, and then they raise rates on all of them, saying that the world has gotten very risky and everyone accepts it. We pay the higher rates. Then they cancel coverage on all the sick patients and patients with pre-existing conditions. They also do that with homes. They cancel coverage on all the sick homes and all the homes with pre-existing conditions while raising rates on all the healthy homes. So they they've offloaded the risk and they're making all of the gain. And then when you file your claim, they fight you every step of the way. They deny, delay, and underpaying. They do this in every insurance line today. So this office, again, um, must enforce the good laws of California and ensure that they are operating in good faith, that they're doing what they're contractually obligated to do, but also making sure they're actually in the business of insurance and not just investing our money in the market, which is currently what we're seeing today. And you know, you know, recently I think the owner of the Dodgers and Lakers made that a little bit more transparent.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, you mentioned homeowners insurance. Uh, any particular agenda for homeowners insurance?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think our most marquee platform proposal that is getting us the most attention is single-payer home disaster insurance or uh nonprofit public nonprofit uh disaster insurance. Again, this isn't my idea. We see this framework exists in countries like New Zealand and France and Spain. Japan has a private public partnership around earthquake insurance. Canada, very interestingly in several provinces, has single payer nonprofit auto insurance. And the idea is this um so insurance takes our premiums and they invest it in the market. That's part of their revenue model. And that's why they've been making gangbuster profits the last couple of years. Um, in a public nonprofit insurance program, we would steward some of those dollars. We would invest it and we would keep all of the returns. And when there's excess capital, we would actually use some of it to drive down risk, invest in safer roads and filling plot holes in Canada's case for single-payer auto insurance. In New Zealand, they invest in floodproofing, um, things that reduce the likelihood of claims being paid out in the future. Right now, the private for-profit insurance industry is not designed or structured to invest in prevention and mitigation or to drive down risk. They price your risk, but they don't drive down risk. In a public insurance program, we would be incentivized to not generate as much profit as possible, but to lower the likelihood of risk for our community. And that's why I've been proposing it. And it's not a whole overall. We wouldn't take over the whole insurance market. Private insurance market would still cover the flood in your home because the pipe burst, the burger, the fire in your home because your stove exploded. But the state would take on the disaster or perils line item.
SPEAKER_00Uh and explain to folks down down here in Los Angeles County, because of the Palisades, the Altadena fires, uh, people have become uh familiar with the state's fair plan, the sort of insurance of last resort for fire coverage. Uh explain how what you're talking about is is different from the fair plan, which folks are really not all that excited about.
SPEAKER_01So the fair plan was created by the state in 1968. It was a civil rights initiative, a public mandate that requires insurance to all buy into an insurance of last resort. The California Fair Plan is one of the most secretive fair plants in the country. It is privately run, it is for profit. Well, okay, I can get into this. It's technically nonprofit. It has a nine-person governing board, and we don't know who sits on it, but we know that they're all members of the insurance industry. They meet in secret, we don't have access to their agenda, we don't have access to their financial models.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01It's crazy. So it's not a public program, it's a public mandate, but it's private. And what the insurance industry is currently doing is if they keep all the healthy homes on their books, then they dump all the homes that they think are sick or with pre-existing conditions onto the fair plan. So what we have there is called risky pool fragmentation, very insecure, very unhealthy. So all the healthy homes are in one pool, all the sick homes are in another pool. So what what happens then? The home, the pool with all the sick homes goes bankrupt. And what happens when they go bankrupt? They just charge a surcharge on all the homeowners and renters in the healthy market to pay for it. Now, when the fair plan has excess capital, do you know what happens?
SPEAKER_00What happens?
SPEAKER_01Do they provide refunds or discounts to the public filter?
SPEAKER_00I bet not.
SPEAKER_01The nine person governing board distributes it amongst the 15 companies. So when there are gains in the fair plan, they distribute the gains. That's why it's called nonprofit. Because the fair plan doesn't keep it. The insurance industry does. And when there are losses, the insurance companies just charge all the homeowners on their plan to pay for it. And last year that's what happened in 2025. Everyone got a temporary surcharge, including renters. Yeah. That thus paid off the bankruptcy in the California fair plan. Now, a single payer, public nonprofit program that we are proposing, everyone would be in one pool. All the healthy homes, all the homes, all the homes with pre-existing conditions. So it's a much more secure and stable pool.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01We would steward those dollars. We would also be nonprofit. We would not be allowed to keep excess capital. We would use excess capital to drive down risk in community-wide floodproofing and fireproofing, things that actually made us collectively safer. And if there was too much, of course, we would just lower the cost of the premiums. In fact, that would be the goal long term. So the idea is in a disaster for all insurance program, we would slowly depopulate the fair plan over time. Because the reason why insurers are not providing insurance in certain zip codes or limiting the number of insurance policies offered to a certain zip code is because of the rise of risk. It's really a disaster that they're at. So if we took that off of their books, then there's really no reason for them to cancel coverage, raise premiums.
SPEAKER_00In Palisades uh and in Altadena, uh a survey about six months after the fires found that about seven in ten survivors said their insurance company had delayed or denied or underpaid their claim. Uh, if you're elected, you will have uh a lot of enforcement power. You've talked about your SWAT team. Uh, what is it you can do about situations like this?
SPEAKER_01Well, one, I want the insurance industry to pay you interest every day they deny, delay, or underpay a valid claim. If we're late on our insurance payments, we get a late fee assessed on us or they cancel our coverage. You got to level the playing field. We also have to recognize why the insurance industry denies delays and underpays. One is that they're trying to tire you out, right? But two, even if they just delay your payment by 30 days, 60 days, or 90 days, your premium dollars are making money for them. So they want to delay the payment as long as possible. That's why we have to set a financial disincentive. That's why I want them to pay you interest every day they deny or delay or earn to pay a valid claim. And when we see widespread practice and patterns of insurance industries not fulfilling their contractual obligations, the department will assess severe fines on those companies for not acting in good faith. And I talked to claim adjusters that tell me that they estimate anywhere from $1.7 billion to $3 billion are stolen every year from Californians in the form of claims that are denied, delayed, and underpaid. And you remember a few years ago, we're having a huge fight at the state level about what we should count as a felony. Forget it, it's $498 or $898. Meanwhile, the insurance industry is stealing $1.7 to $3 billion every year from Californians in the form of claims that they're contractually obligated, legally obligated to pay the consumer because you paid for that business. I mean, this is not a healthy market. This is a hostage situation. It's very gangster if you think about it. They make us afraid to use the business we pay for often for decades. And when we finally call in for the service that we paid for, they deny delay and underpay.
SPEAKER_00So how do we get to a system where there actually is robust enforcement? Right back in May, the state found that State Farm broke the law in their way they handle their wildfire claims. There's still, you know, we're September 15, as we're recording this, there's still no hearing schedules. How do we actually get an enforcement system that is that is real?
SPEAKER_01It's a department of 1,300 FTEs. And I do think that the department could invest more of its resources on enforcement and making sure that companies are operating in good faith. Because again, this is the only backstop between working families and this trillion dollar industry. But this is also why I'm proposing a public nonprofit insurance program. And I'm talking obviously in stages and in pieces, but we have to create more leverage. We cannot be wholly dependent on this speculative for-profit industry that honestly, I'm not sure, is operating in good faith to consumers. And so people have critiqued our campaign for being pie in the sky, magical thinking, you know, promising things that we can't deliver on. I think it's magical thinking to think that if we continue going down the same path, that we're going to get a different result for consumers. And we have to be willing to fix and repair the system that is not working for everyday Californians. We have to make the economy work for all of us. And that's what political leadership is.
SPEAKER_00Another hole in the system, a lot of people have identified it. So you've got tons of families in Altadena who are saying they're being pressured to move back into their homes, but they still think they're contaminated and there's no uniform standard to show them otherwise. Is there anything you as insurance commissioner can do about that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So if it is not safe to live in your home, that is a total loss. And you should be paid out by your insurance as if it your home is a total loss. Forcing you to move back into a home where you're gonna develop cancer or asthma or other illnesses is that that's not that's not a habitable space. And so we must come up with a statewide standard. And and the courts agree um that we need to um that insurers should pay out where smoke damage causes um uh sickness. So we have to create a statewide standard, and I am looking forward to working with the state legislature to do that and then to enforce that contractual obligation.
SPEAKER_00Uh a couple questions about the the current insurance commissioner, Ricardo Laura, and some of the stuff he's done. Um there's a there's a a school of thought, and it's I guess it's a school of thought that this position tends to deal with a lot, uh, a political School of thought that says that you know regulation is actually causing a problem and it's it's chasing insurance companies out of California and they just don't have the right structure to to to to to survive here. So last year, Laura let insurers factor in what they described as forward-looking risk models and reinsurance costs uh when setting the homeowner's premium. Um I guess the governor was also pushing in that direction as well. Uh, is that a a change that that you support or is that something you want to undo?
SPEAKER_01It's not something I will undo, but it only addresses half of the question, which is that the commissioner, and frankly, the common approach of thinking in this realm is how do we stabilize the market for the insurance industry? But it doesn't answer the question how we stabilize the insurance market for consumers.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So yes, it it allowed uh industries to maybe offer a couple hundred thousand dollars, a couple of hundred thousand more policies, maybe like where that still remains to be seen. But it doesn't address the available the affordability issue for homeowners. So if there is now homeowners insurance offered in your zip code, but you can't afford it, it's basically not available. We have to figure out how to make insurance affordable and available, not just available.
SPEAKER_00Under Prop uh 103, the the public can can formally challenge a rate hike, right? That's called the intervener process. Consumer groups say that it saved Californians billions of dollars. Uh Laura just made it harder for interveners to get paid unless their challenges make what's described as a quote substantial difference. Uh is that a rule we should keep or a repeal?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, I've been hearing a lot about this. I do want to see the data. I generally support intervener processes. Um, I believe that it has saved consumers millions of dollars over the last few decades to have another set of advocates that are fighting for consumers. And we need as much advocacy on our side as possible. Um, but I do agree that it should make a difference. Um, that, you know, they're not just intervening in places where the Department of Insurance would have already rejected a rate increase. And so I'm very interested in looking at the data around that. But I do support generally um interveners in the process.
SPEAKER_00I want to ask a follow-up question on your natural uh disaster insurance for all plan. Uh that would need legislative approval to get going. Um, you know, a new public entity that you know funded by redirecting the insurer premiums you talked about. Um have you uh got any legislators who are on board who are willing to sort of uh take it and and and and lead the lead the fight? That's a big fight against the insurance lobby. Um so you're gonna have a a good team on that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but you know, keep in mind we're not proposing to take over the home insurance industry, just a slice of it. And honestly, I I don't know why insurance companies would not be on board. We're offering to stabilize the market for them as well. And we're also offering to take on maybe the riskiest aspect of their portfolio. You know, yes, I have been talking to state legislators to kind of pique interest to see um what people's assessments are. There are folks that are definitely interested. Um, but yeah, it would take capital um to put that forward. But I think it's really important that we elect people that um are willing to take on that fight.
SPEAKER_00In a race like this, which is which is down ballot, it's not sort of marquee and the media doesn't cover it a ton, uh, voters uh when they're unfamiliar with candidates, they often look for uh either personal or organizational endorsements as sort of validators for candidates. Uh in your campaign, uh, which endorsements, uh either personal or uh organizational, would uh you like voters to be aware of before they cast their votes?
SPEAKER_01I'm the first statewide candidate that's been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders, my former boss, and endorsed by the California Labor Federation and also our lieutenant governor and controller, um the California Young Democrats, and our teachers and our nurses.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Anything else you would like voters to know before they receive their ballots and cast their votes?
SPEAKER_01Well, well, I will say this this is the only office that I filed for to run for in um 2026. And this is a job that I really want. I really believe that this under the radar, under leverage office, could be a powerful platform for California. My opponent, um, after the Palisade fires, where he worked really hard on behalf of his constituents, didn't file for insurance commissioner after the fires. He filed for treasurer's office. And then when that race got too hard, filed for equalization. When that race got too hard, then filed for insurance commissioner. Um I'm not looking for just a job or a placeholder. I really believe that this office should be a powerful platform and champion for everyday Californians. And I want to transform this office to be another ally in our movement in the fight for California, to make the state work for all of us.
SPEAKER_00Jane Kim, thanks for joining me.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00And that does it for this episode of What's Next Los Angeles. My thanks to LA Forward for making this program possible, and to the Pat Brown Institute, especially Program Director Mike Wang for research and preparation. Thanks to Tanya We see us for editing and production, and of course, my thanks to you for listening. Until next time, take care and peace.