Ep.2: Insurance Shell Game & More w/guest Rep. Long Tran

This week on GA House Rules, State Representatives Karen Lupton and Long Tran discuss immigration issues, the insurance shell game in Florida, and Nebraska (yes, Nebraska), among other current legislative issues! This wide-ranging discussion will inform and engage you! 

summary

In this episode of Georgia House Rules, Representative Karen Lupton and Representative Long Tran discuss pressing issues facing Georgia, including community engagement, immigration, Medicaid expansion, and the implications of tort reform. They explore the challenges within the insurance market, the economic situation in Nebraska, and the need for better services for the homeless. The conversation highlights the importance of legislative action and community support in addressing these critical issues.

takeaways

• Community engagement is crucial for addressing local issues.
• Immigration concerns require proactive community planning.
• Legislative battles often involve significant public pressure.
• Medicaid expansion remains a key focus for Democrats.
• Tort reform is a contentious issue with real implications.
• Insurance companies often pool resources across states.
• Georgia faces challenges with uninsured accidents.
• Constituents should not be blamed for seeking fair treatment from insurers.
• Economic policies can lead to significant state challenges.
• Rural areas need more support for recovery and services.

Thank you for listening!

Transcript

Karen Lupton (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the second episode of Georgia House Rules. I am your host, Representative Karen Lupton from the Georgia Democratic House Caucus. Now I have with me a fellow member of the Georgia Democratic House Caucus, Representative Long Tran. Hello Long, thanks for chatting with me today.

Long Tran (00:21)
Hi Karen, happy to come on board.

Karen Lupton (00:24)
This is wonderful. We were talking a little bit before we started recording about you were talking to Cobb progressives in Cobb County, correct?

Long Tran (00:33)
Yeah, yep. I went over to Cobb from DeKalb County to meet with some Cobb County Progressives, fantastic folks, fantastic volunteers there. They're very concerned about what's happening in our state and nationally, and they want to push back. They want to fight back and we need to fight back.

Karen Lupton (00:52)
What sort of advice were you able to give them about something more, a little bit more tangible than just kind of sending an email or making a call?

Long Tran (01:00)
So on some things like, immigration, we just don't have the manpower as an immigrant community and all the nonprofit orgs to reach out to apartment complexes and find out what their plan is in case someone does get deported and their grandma is left at home or their kids are left at home. What does the apartment complex do in that scenario? And so any help they can do with reaching out with apartment complexes, landlords.

and creating a backup plan in case there is an immigration rate that happens offsite outside of the apartment complexes or town homes, of whatever they're renting, right? That there's a plan versus just a 10-year-old kid walking into the main office and they go, oh, we don't know what to do. We'll just call 911. And that tends to lead to defects. there's alternative options that

we can have in place and they can have discussions with their tenants as to what to do should that scenario happen.

Karen Lupton (02:07)
Were there any lawyers there to give advice about what they can do? I was in a meeting several weeks ago regarding immigration with a bunch of lawyers speaking to people about certain things they could try to set up to help protect, say, their kids if something happened to them.

Long Tran (02:26)
not, not yesterday, no, attorneys were there yesterday. So this is very generic stuff, not actual like specific. And it's definitely not anything that would cross the line into sanctuary. It's just informing their tenants and themselves as landlords, what they could possibly be doing.

Karen Lupton (02:47)
That's great. I'm glad that you had such a good audience and people ready to take action in any way that they can to, I don't want to say resist, but to care for people who can be affected by this and not just the people who might get hauled off, but the people they leave behind. These people are parts of families and businesses. connected.

Long Tran (03:00)
Yeah.

Yes.

Absolutely. so, resistance isn't just simply waving signs and yelling and screaming. It is protecting some of the most vulnerable in our community, and those are children and the elderly.

Karen Lupton (03:29)
Absolutely. I love that because people are constantly asking, what do I do? What do I do? I'm sure you were there on, for those of you who may not know, the Georgia State Legislature, the Georgia General Assembly just had crossover day, which is a massive day of legislating in the state house and Senate. We stayed until 11 o'clock about at night. We were in session for 13 hours.

You know, little breaks for lunch here and there, but we were there passing bills, wrangling with what was coming through. And in the middle of all of that, a large group of Democrats came down to the Capitol and there was a very large, I mean, that was, that was a lot of people, a big press conference.

Long Tran (04:19)
Yeah.

That was fantastic. Look, we passed 75 bills that day and that's a record. And it's not like I want to celebrate 75 bills of bad bills, right? There's some good bills, some bad bills, some bills that are, they don't matter very much. And so, but we did go through 75 bills and I don't want that to happen with a blind eye.

So all these Democrats and even independents, were plenty of folks who are not party affiliated. They just care and they wanted to come down and watch what we're doing and support the reps members that they support. And I felt that having that huge press conference talking about what could be possible with the legislation that we want to put forward as Democrats, like Medicaid expansion.

is very important.

Karen Lupton (05:23)
Amen. It's hard sometimes to overcome the headlines. A lot of people sometimes ask like, what are you doing? The Democrats aren't doing anything. What are you, what are you doing? And it's hard for me to try. I don't know if this has been difficult for you or if you found that out and about talking to constituents. It's like we, we have, we have put forth bills to fully expand Medicaid like over and over and over again.

They just go to this very quiet graveyard to die. We can hold press conferences about them and we can talk about them, but we do not have the leverage to force the hand of the Republican controlled legislature to take up the bills that we support.

Long Tran (05:55)
you

Look, we need Medicaid expansion. I'd like to see some kind of Medicaid expansion that happens similar to what happened in Ohio, which was actually under a Republican governor. but we're nowhere close to that, but we should take a little bit of self-congratulatory. I don't think governor Kemp would have done what he did, which isn't that great, but I don't think he would have even taken that step if there wasn't pressure from us and the public.

And so we just got to keep up the pressure, keep going and keep explaining to the public. We're going to keep fighting. We're going to keep pushing, even if it means that the other side only moves towards Medicaid expansion inch by inch.

Karen Lupton (06:56)
Inch by painful inch. It can seem so painful sometimes to let people know that we're fighting, it's slow progress. I had heard before, and you've always got your ear to the ground long, you seem to have like spies in every corner. I don't mean that in a bad way. You've always got your ear to the ground. I had thought maybe between last session and this, that there was some sort of

Long Tran (06:59)
Itch.

Okay.

Karen Lupton (07:27)
some sort of compromise coming from the Republicans that they by and large were getting pressure that like full Medicaid expansion, not just the governor's pathways to coverage, full Medicaid expansion needs to happen. And then that sort of got swallowed up in the big tort reform conversation. Do you have any idea what was happening with that conversation and why Medicaid is not on the table this session?

Long Tran (07:52)
It's real simple. President Trump won. that, you know, they took it as a, as some kind of mandate that's given to them. You know, they believe when Trump says that he won by a huge margin, he didn't, he won by the smallest margin in recent history, if ever. And, you know, had we flipped a few seats and the president lost, then

you would be seeing very different conversations right now. They would not want to be put in a position where we're able to use Medicaid expansion to continue to flip seats and win elections. But that didn't happen. Trump won. We didn't flip any seats. We did gain a couple of seats. But if anything, we lost a seat that we probably shouldn't have lost.

And so, know, there's like, hmm, I guess we don't need to talk about Medicaid expansion since we've got a new mandate now.

Karen Lupton (08:59)
Yeah, forget you. Forget you, Democrats. You have not brought the heat. So therefore, you're out.

Long Tran (09:01)
Hahaha!

Yeah, so.

Karen Lupton (09:09)
Yeah. And, said we get tort reform, which, which to me is still, to me, it's, it's a odd, odd political stance to harp on when you have such a mandate or, or as they feel a mandate. And by that, I mean, if Republicans are like, Hey, great, let the dogs out. We can do whatever we want. They're like, let's give big business.

Long Tran (09:12)
We get torque reform.

Karen Lupton (09:37)
super duper breaks. Like that's the first thing they go to. That was, I don't think that that, I hope that we can work that messaging, especially with what's happened in Florida with the just flat out lies from the insurance company that happened in Florida saying, Hey, there's, mean, it's the same script that's here in Georgia. Insurance companies are coming and saying, we, we can't possibly make money here in Georgia and we're going to leave the state if you don't change things. And the Florida, what Florida is showing us, right.

now is that those were all crocodile tears from the insurance industry.

Long Tran (10:12)
What's going on in Florida and Nebraska? And I'll talk about Nebraska briefly, but Florida, it's proven that tort reform doesn't work, right? It's not lowering rates. It's not as stable as some keep saying it is. And the companies are still leaving Florida. And so...

For us, we have to recognize how insurance companies pool their money. And part of the pooling of their money is the insurance that we pay, the premiums we pay in Georgia, is part of that pool of money that the insurance companies use to pay out claims within Florida, which is why our rates are going up. And that's not going to change if our premiums are constantly tied to a state that has

Hurricanes after hurricanes after hurricanes.

Karen Lupton (11:09)
That

is so interesting. heard you talk about these pools earlier this week and I had no idea that that was the case. kind of thought that every state or every business sort of walled off their money into their own accounts. Can you explain that a little bit more?

Long Tran (11:29)
So it's kind of like what we do at the federal level, right? Where we collect all these taxes and then we dole out educational dollars to different states. California can fund its own education, Georgia cannot. And we see that with a lot of blue and red states. So it's the same with the insurance companies. They need to be able to pull money and have that pot of money set aside to be able to pay out claims.

And some states just can't create that pot of money large enough. And Florida is a perfect example of that. So they expand that pot to include Georgia. yeah, you know, as they pay out claims, they use some of our dollars to pay out those claims. But that pool of money, they also siphon it off as we're going to find out from the research that's or the investigation that's been done in Florida.

to subsidiaries that invest that money, right? And so they don't wanna take that money out of those investments, because they're making money off of it to pay out premiums. And so they're trying to say, look, we had this pot of money, they don't necessarily tell you that they've siphoned off 10, 20, 30, however many percent off into investments, leaving just 50, 60 % of what they took in.

Karen Lupton (12:33)
Yes.

Right, yeah.

Long Tran (12:58)
to pay out these claims and I was like, we're running out of money because of these claims, which isn't necessarily true. So, yeah.

Karen Lupton (13:06)
They've split it up. They've split it up

and are making money on these things, on these subsidiaries. Do you know what other states are tied together in pools? I mean, I'm guessing it's most, I'm just guessing from what you're saying, red and blue, that it's mostly in the South.

Long Tran (13:23)
Yeah, mostly in the south, the Midwest, or the mountain regions, the Dakotas and whatnot. The lower population, right? The more density you have, the more policies and premiums you have, and that makes it easier to spread out the damages. And so, yeah, one of the things Georgia is facing right now from a property in casualty, we're talking about car insurance, is we have

one of the highest rates of uninsured accidents in the nation. And yet we refuse to give some kind of driver's permit so that undocumented folks can get insurance so that they can drive on our roadways. That, you if you increase the number of policy holders by 10, 15%, you're going to see a little bit more stabilization, right? But...

Karen Lupton (13:57)
Interesting.

No.

Yes.

Long Tran (14:22)
That's something we're not looking at. We're looking at preventing people from suing the insurance companies and the businesses that violate the rules.

Karen Lupton (14:36)
Exactly. That's, this is also fascinating to me because I'm not a business person at all. You are a business person.

Long Tran (14:44)
I am. My coffee shop's been hit with increased insurance premiums, even though we've never had a claim. And at some point, if it gets too high, we can't afford to keep our doors open. We can only raise our prices so much before customers are like, I'll just make my coffee at home instead of coming into Pichi.

Karen Lupton (14:51)
Mmm.

Right.

Yeah, Peachy Cafe, Norcross, Georgia. Hit it up.

Long Tran (15:07)
Yep.

But yeah, so I pay very close attention to those numbers. And when they say we're going to reduce premiums, I'm going to look into can you actually reduce premiums? And we haven't seen those reduction in premiums in Texas or Florida. And they've been caught out on it so much. Now they say we'll stabilize premiums so that they don't increase. Instead of saying we're going to reduce premiums. But that's not

proven true either, nor has it been proven true for insurance companies not to leave, right? They see the writing on the wall and they're just like, we've made our money, we're just not going to cover you guys anymore, right? You guys don't have to pay a premium to us anymore. We're just going to leave the state because we see the writing on the wall. There's going to be more hurricanes, more storms, and we're just going to leave so that we don't have to pay out. And we've made all this money for the last 30 years.

Karen Lupton (15:42)
Okay, they're leaving anyway.

What?

Right, we've been collecting it. Yeah.

Long Tran (16:05)
And goodbye! Thanks!

Thanks! Thanks for paying your homeowners insurance for 30 years, your mortgage is paid off, and we're not going to cover you now!

Karen Lupton (16:15)
Yeah, God

forbid that tree fall on your house later days. We're out. It's, it's brutal. It's brutal. What, what my, husband, we've got two other drivers in our, well, we've got four drivers now. My son who is 18 and my daughter who is 20 drive. And my daughter has, you know, a little beat up Hyundai. I mean, it runs, you know, it's fine.

Long Tran (16:25)
Very brutal.

Karen Lupton (16:45)
And we had the insurance on it. And my husband was, you we don't, we didn't get anything fancy. mean, insurance, especially for young folks can get pretty expensive. And her car was stolen off of her college campus. And my husband said, call the insurance, see what they'll give us. You know, for, for, for theft recovery, $0, $0 is what we got. And I had to call my husband back at work and say,

Honey, they're not giving us any money. was like, so we were, even though he thought that we had some sort of minimum shelf that we could expect, you know, mean, geez, the money to get it out of the impound, because the car was, the car was found and taken in by, but it was on the side of the road. The cop, the Cobb County police actually pulled it off the side of the road. We had to pay to get it out of their impound. And then the thing wasn't run, wasn't, I mean, it was busted. We.

had to pay all over for the car again in order to fix it to get it running. Cause it was like, well, we can scrap the car and still pay on the car that we no longer have. Or we can pay to fix the car. And at least we're paying for the car that we have. It was money either way, but yeah, that insurance didn't. It's always when you need it, when you find out that it's gone.

Long Tran (17:54)
Yeah.

Yep.

And yet.

Karen Lupton (18:07)
And

go ahead.

Long Tran (18:10)
Now, these insurance companies fight tooth and nail to minimize their payout. And I get that. It's business. They shouldn't be so upset. And we as elected officials shouldn't be upset when our constituents are fighting tooth and nail to get paid from a policy that they paid into. But instead, we're putting the blame on them for

Karen Lupton (18:28)
you

Yes, I agree.

Long Tran (18:38)
wanting to be made whole, but we don't criticize insurance companies for not wanting to spend too much money. And you know, I get it. It's a business. Of course you're going to do that. Otherwise you're going to be out of business, but we shouldn't be blaming our constituents for having the exact same mentality.

Karen Lupton (18:59)
I always would joke with my husband, my husband's in computers. And I said, man, if you ever want to leave computers, insurance is where you need to go. If you want to leave computers and keep the family from going homeless, insurance is where you need to go. Cause I have never met an insurance person who's hurting for money. And I mean, that's a very broad statement right there. You know, asterisk, not the statement of the Georgia house democratic caucus. is Karen leptin statement, but neither is it long trans statement, but.

Long Tran (19:08)
Yeah

sufficient.

Karen Lupton (19:27)
I'm trying to give you clearance here. It's very, the level of profit in kind of many, many different areas of our lives now. My thoughts, think we're kind of returning to this kind of gilded age where there's people who have a whole lot of money nearly monopolizing.

Long Tran (19:52)
Yeah, let's not go back to those days. I know the

other folks want to get us back. The guy, the two guys in the White House, they want to get us back there. I would prefer not to go back to the go today. Yes. Great. Yep.

Karen Lupton (19:58)
Let's not move backwards.

Yeah.

Let's prefer. Yes, because we know what happened after the Gilded Age, which was the massive crash in the Great Depression, which we

are definitely. Let's not, let's not, let's not.

Long Tran (20:20)
So let's talk about Nebraska real quick.

Karen Lupton (20:21)
Let's,

yes, you said you'd talk about it. Yes, let's talk about Nebraska.

Long Tran (20:25)
Nebraska could end up bankrupt. No, a very red state, very Republican state. Where two years ago, just like us, they're like, we're cutting tax rates. They cut their income tax rate down below 4 % to 3.99.

Karen Lupton (20:28)
Are you kidding me?

Whoa!

Long Tran (20:43)
So, but now guess what is happening? They, so almost 50 % of their labor force in that state are undocumented immigrants.

And majority of them have either been deported or they are run scared into Colorado or California where they feel safer. So farm ag, just like Georgia is the biggest industry in the state and they do not have the farm hands to work the farms. And that means there's no revenue, right? You add to that the federal government cutting spending, right? Cutting the farm subsidies.

Karen Lupton (21:20)
Yeah.

Long Tran (21:27)
to the farmers in that state and a demand for a return to get back into the office. So all those people who are watching Yellowstone and decided they were going to move out to Nebraska and Wyoming and work from home from there, they're having to come back to LA, DC, New York, because we're getting rid of work from home. So Nebraska's got all this loss of income.

Karen Lupton (21:43)
So pretty!

Long Tran (21:57)
and they're losing population and now they're in the red by three or $400 million. And so they got to figure out, they're like, you know, we can make cuts, we can do this and that. But sometimes when you make those cuts, it just increases the cycle. But what I love the most is they're like, those tax breaks we gave the wealthy, we might have to ask for that back.

Karen Lupton (22:05)
Wooo! that's no good.

Let's rethink.

Long Tran (22:28)
Let's rethink, except the Walthy is gonna be like, yeah, we enjoyed our tax break the last few years. If you raise our taxes, we're just gonna leave. And so they are in a tough spot, a spot that I do not wanna, no, and I do not wanna see Georgia in that same spot as Nebraska. And so we gotta keep saying, you have this red state,

Karen Lupton (22:38)
Yes.

And yeah, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Long Tran (22:57)
with the model of low taxation government, supposedly government efficiency. And now they're on the verge of bankruptcy. Yeah.

Karen Lupton (23:06)
Hmm.

And of course on, was it on crossover day that we passed? Yeah, it was crossover day, wasn't it?

Long Tran (23:15)
Yeah,

we took the income tax rate down from 5.39 down to 5.19 without meeting the benchmarks that we needed. Which, yeah.

Karen Lupton (23:27)
Yeah, the legislature set rules that said we'll cut this income tax level when we meet these marks. We haven't met them, but they still brought the bill anyway.

Long Tran (23:35)
Right.

What I don't get is the biggest mark for reducing it is a revenue projection from the governor's office. He could have met that benchmark. There's nothing for him to say, our revenue is going to increase by 3%, 5%, whatever the benchmark is, right? Instead, his revenue projection showed a decrease, meaning we didn't meet the benchmark. Far be it for me to mind read.

Karen Lupton (23:47)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Long Tran (24:08)
people.

Karen Lupton (24:10)
Especially not Governor Kemp. Lord. Yeah.

And that's his MO is setting our revenue estimate. Hey, we're going to make a ballpark guess, you know, our best guess estimate at what money the state is going to bring on in a fiscal year. And he has consistently, as he would say, yeah, as he would say, conservatively said, we're only going to make this much. We're only going to make this much.

Long Tran (24:31)
No baudit.

Karen Lupton (24:41)
And I'm not, as you know, as most people have heard about on the pages, we've, the state itself has far, far more money in reserves than is needed and yet still remains unused.

I'm sorry, I'm just going to... And some part of me is like, thinks, you can't know, like if Trump wins again, we're not getting any money ever again. And we're just going to have to like stuff our pockets full while the getting's good and, and hang on.

Long Tran (25:02)
Yeah?

That's going to be the big question for him and the Republicans and the rural Republicans, because I think they thought that Trump was going to extend FEMA aid and that, you know, we'd be getting more money from FEMA, and that is not the case. Trump basically said, hey, we appreciate you coming and asking for an extension, but no, you're not going to get an extension. So all those houses you see in rural Georgia went

harp on their roofs? Yeah, we're not helping out with that. You're not getting federal dollars. They're going to stay that way or, you know, those people are going be like, hopefully they'll be like, well, if the federal government's not helping us and we've got over 15 billion in surplus, maybe you guys can afford to help us with a new roof.

Karen Lupton (25:54)
Yeah, they're gonna stay that way.

Yeah, instead of doling out $500 tax cuts that are gone the second, you know, it's like a very light rain. It's evaporated as soon as it hits the ground. Instead of that, which is a proposal, actually getting people back up on their feet because Helene, Helene tore the rural areas and I mean, in Augusta and places like that tore the state apart and still needs, I dare say billions of dollars in recovery money.

Long Tran (26:38)
Yep.

They do.

Karen Lupton (26:42)
Have you visited

rural Georgia lately? I have not since Helene.

Long Tran (26:47)
Not since session started, but I visited shortly after Helene hit and around November, early December, shortly after shortly after election, I drove through, I went through Albany and Valdosta, Savannah. And so I drove through some of those areas, spent some time in some of smaller towns and they're they're hurt. They're legitimately hurting really bad. you know,

Karen Lupton (26:57)
wow.

Long Tran (27:16)
Some the things, yeah, some of the decisions we make are gonna have long-term consequences in those areas. People can only be hungry and broke for so long before they just walk away from it all and come to Atlanta homeless, right? If you have a house that's leaking water, turning moldy because there's no roof, at some point you're just kinda walk away, right?

Karen Lupton (27:16)
I'm so sorry to hear it.

Mm-hmm.

She is.

Yeah,

at what point is it just a total loss?

Long Tran (27:48)
Yeah, and then you have no job, nothing else. And so you're just going to come to Atlanta because that's where the services for the homeless population are. We see that with our suburban cities. They can't take care of their homeless. They don't have homeless shelters. They don't have drug addiction centers. And so all those folks, they make their way to Atlanta. It's not because Atlanta's got some piss poor policy.

Karen Lupton (27:57)
Mm-hmm.

correct.

Long Tran (28:16)
that creates homelessness, it's because we have the solutions and people come here looking for those solutions.

Karen Lupton (28:17)
Mmm.

That's a really good point to make, that it's not a policy that exists in an urban area that creates homelessness itself, but the density of services. Representative Tran and I live not terribly far from each other. His district is just to the north of mine. And we exist actually at the extreme end. We live at the extreme end of one of the MARTA lines, one of the public transit lines that I like to say,

Marta's motto should be, you can't get there from here. But I'm at the very last stop on that Marta line is in representative trans district and the next to the last stop and the two stops previous are in mine. And we live in these smaller suburban spaces that don't have massive budgets, don't have those sort of services for people who

are homeless and God knows we've all heard the stories of cops just setting people on the Marta and sending them downtown.

Long Tran (29:28)
Yep.

Karen Lupton (29:30)
yeah, that's, there's so much that we could talk about, w representative Tran and I came in, the same class in 2022. but I, I believe representative Tran has had a lot more experience with politics than, than I, and especially seeing things in a national sense and understanding where, Georgia's place is in that. So I'm so glad that you've.

been willing to talk with us today and share some of your expertise, give us a bird's eye view of, or I shouldn't say bird's eye, I should say an insider's eye of insurance things, Medicaid, Nebraska, especially this is, gotta rename this episode. It's gotta be like Nebraska. It's gotta be all about Nebraska. This is, it's fascinating. And I'm so glad that you took the time to do this. I hope we haven't kept you too long. I know you have a busy schedule.

Long Tran (30:11)
Yeah, go Google Nebraska and bankruptcy.

Not at all.

That's life as a state rep, right? We're always busy, always on the go. Yep.

Karen Lupton (30:28)
Okay. Yeah, it's a Sunday, man. We're working. We're still doing it.

Well, thank you so much, Representative Long, for joining us. And for everybody else out there, you know where to find us.