It’s no secret that Liberty Northwest, a private company that’s one of the two major workers’ compensation insurers in Oregon, is backing a ballot measure that would put the market leader, SAIF, out of business. Shorn of the political rhetoric, Liberty’s main complaint about SAIF is that SAIF doesn’t charge high enough premiums. SAIF is owned by the State of Oregon but run as an independent corporation.
Today’s Oregonian reports that SAIF and Liberty are about equal in terms of premiums received ($329 million for Liberty in 2003; $304 million for SAIF) but SAIF insures 2-1/2 times as many people (41.9% of the market) as does Liberty (16.1%).
SAIF hit the newspapers a few months ago when Liberty revealed that SAIF had been paying Neil Goldschmidt’s lobbying company $20,000 a month for unspecified but apparently valuable services. That stopped in 2003, before Uncle Neil’s market value declined, but Liberty has continued to fight to kill SAIF.
I’m willing to listen to Liberty’s arguments, but so far I’m not seeing why anyone who doesn’t work for Liberty should vote for it.
The article contained one other interesting tidbit: although SAIF and Liberty receive about the same amount in premiums, and have about the same number of employees (1000 for Liberty, 815 for SAIF), Liberty pays its president more than three times what SAIF pays its president ($697,000 compared to $218,000). If Liberty would pay its president what SAIF does, then Liberty could afford to rent two ex-governors.
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3 responses
Rude! But true.
We have five ex-governors available (Hatfield, Atiyeh, What’s-His-Name, Roberts, and Kitzhaber), so the free market and the laws of supply and demand might keep the price down.
SAIF doesn’t need to be dismantled. It badly needs, however, to be made back into an ordinary state agency, accountable to the public like any other. If it continues to fight for its status as sleazy, semi-private slush fund, it deserves whatever grief it gets.