How all-blue Albany is shaking up the insurance industry

Insurance is one of those topics that people don’t give much thought to, as long as they can avoid it. But in today’s world, it’s of critical importance. There is health insurance, which can make the difference between life and death. There’s life insurance, which helps grieving families. Then there is property and casualty insurance, just the type of thing you need when your apartment floods or your car gets stolen. Even the relatively obscure title insurance can incite a spirited debate.

Just like the industry they cover, government officials who set state policies on insurance typically attract scant public attention. “When you get into the Legislature, you want to work on issues like the death penalty so that you can talk about it at parties,” state Senate Insurance Committee Chairman Neil Breslin joked. “I got left with insurance.”

Yet insurance is a key issue, especially in the state Capitol. “The states are the regulators of insurance, not the federal government, with very rare exceptions,” said state Department of Financial Services Superintendent Linda Lacewell, the state’s top insurance regulator. “There are hundreds of thousands of jobs related to insurance in New York state (and) billions of dollars in premiums that are paid.”

So when big things do happen in the state’s $4.7 trillion insurance industry, the lives of millions of New Yorkers are affected by the decisions of legislators and regulators.