Garamendi Urged to Fight Bias on Marital Status

A state Insurance Department task force is urging California Insurance Commissioner John A. Garamendi to get tough with insurers who discriminate--in rates and coverage--against unmarried individuals and “domestic partners.”

Garamendi already has embraced many of the recommendations of the group’s report, which he will officially accept at a press conference in Los Angeles today. He is calling it a “vital blueprint to end unjustified discrimination against the unmarried.”

Regulations proposed by Garamendi would prohibit auto insurers from using marital status as a basis for setting premiums.

However, one of the report’s central themes, that married and unmarried couples be treated the same, is unlikely to get the regulatory attention and backing hoped for by its authors and proponents.

Most of the state’s large insurance companies have already voiced opposition to the recommendations, which have been circulating in draft form for the past six months. Insurers commonly refuse to issue joint policies to unmarried couples for health, rental and auto coverage. Indeed, in a survey cited in the report, insurers say that not only is it legal--at this point--to set different rates and in other ways discriminate against unmarried policy buyers, but that it is a sound business practice justified by statistical data.

Not so, insists Thomas F. Coleman, a Los Angeles attorney who headed the working group on marital status, part of the commissioner’s anti-discrimination task force. Coleman, who says he has been fighting “pervasive” discrimination against unmarried people for 20 years, said that the insurance companies have yet to provide the statistics on which they base higher rates for the unmarried or discounts for married persons.

While the issue of discrimination against unmarried singles and couples hits all the hot buttons in the on-going debate over homosexual rights, Coleman said that the vast majority of unmarried people who bear the brunt of discrimination are heterosexual, and that by the year 2000 unmarried people will make up the majority of California’s adult population.

The report also recommends that Garamendi:

* Issue orders to insurance companies to stop discriminating on the basis of marital status.

* Support a ballot initiative on the so-called “pay at the pump” auto insurance system that would cover all drivers. Garamendi has voiced support for this concept.

* Support universal health care coverage, which would provide basic care to everyone regardless of status.

* Issue new regulations declaring rate discrimination based on marital status to be an unfair business practice and prohibiting insurance companies from refusing to issue joint policies to unmarried couples.

* Take legal action, in conjunction with the state Department of Corporations (which oversees many health care insurers), against health insurance companies that refuse to provide coverage to domestic partners of employees.

While most of the recommendations are already in force or are being supported by the insurance commissioner, those pertaining to coverage for unmarried couples pose difficulties, said Bill Schultz, a spokesman for the commissioner’s office.

Garamendi will likely order his staff to study those proposals, but “there doesn’t seem to be the authority,” he said, for the insurance commissioner to “force a company to provide insurance to unmarried couples.”

Tom Conneely, president of the Assn. of California Insurance Companies, said his group has “considerable disagreement” with the report. He said the group is “adamantly opposed to any kind of discrimination based solely on sexual orientation or lifestyle,” but insurers also oppose joint insurance coverage for unmarried couples.