Speaker for March 4, 2013

Dave Jones is California's Insurance Commissioner.

Elected on November 2, 2010, Jones leads the California Department of Insurance (CDI), the largest consumer protection agency in the state, which regulates the $125 billion insurance industry.

The Daily Journal, California's largest legal newspaper, in 2011 named him one of California's Top 100 Lawyers. The Greenlining Institute gave Jones their "2012 Big Heart Award" for his work promoting insurance industry diversity.

Jones began his career as a legal aid attorney, providing free legal assistance to the poor with Legal Services of Northern California from 1988 to 1995. In 1995, Jones was one of only 13 Americans awarded the prestigious White House Fellowship. He served in the Clinton Administration for three years as Special Assistant and Counsel to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. Jones served on the Sacramento City Council from 1999 to 2004.

Jones graduated with honors from DePauw University, Harvard Law School and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He and his wife, Kim Flores, have two children, Isabelle and William, and live in Sacramento.

Accomplishments

Since taking office as Insurance Commissioner, Jones has secured crucial victories for consumers, including:

Saving individual health insurance policyholders more than $145 million in premiums; reducing medical malpractice rates, saving medical providers $23 million.

Issuing emergency regulations to require that at least 80 percent of the individual health insurance premium dollar go to actual health care, and not to insurer profits, marketing and overhead;

Issuing guidance to implement federal healthcare reform, including requiring health insurers to cover children with pre-existing conditions;

Protecting California's seniors with new laws on the sale of annuities;

Obtaining insurance company investments in low and moderate income communities;

Investigating fraud, which has lead to nearly 1000 arrests to date;

Filing two major anti-fraud lawsuits to combat healthcare provider fraud, which have cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars;

Investigating life insurance companies and securing strict business reforms to ensure companies quickly pay out life insurance benefits;   reaching settlement with MetLife to end decades-long practice of improperly holding onto life insurance benefits;

Reaching settlements with four companies, requiring them to provide essential treatment for autism.

As a legislator, Jones had more than seventy bills signed into law, including:

Reforming California's conservatorship laws, enacting sweeping protections for seniors and dependent adults facing abuse (Assembly Bill 1363 of 2006);

Preventing HMOs and health insurers from discriminating against women by charging men and women different rates for the same health insurance policies (Assembly Bill 119 of 2009);

First-in-the-nation "green insurance" legislation allowing Californians to share their personal vehicles in car-sharing pools without invalidating their auto insurance (Assembly Bill 1871 of 2010);

Securing billions in federal funding to improve California's hospital health care safety net and fund children's health care by establishing a hospital provider fee (Assembly Bill 1383 of 2009);

Protecting private medical records from misuse (Assembly Bill 1298 of 2007) and disclosure (Assembly Bill 211 of 2008);

Creating the nation's largest early childhood education and preschool program to give children the best possible start (Assembly Bill 2759 of 2008).