Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Oklahoma City – With an insurance roundtable at the Medford Emergency Services Building this afternoon, Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John D. Doak made good on a campaign pledge delivered in 2010 to his future constituents.
On the campaign trail the commissioner had promised that election season wouldn’t be the only time Oklahomans would see John Doak in their communities. He intends to meet and discuss Insurance Department-related issues with residents in every one of Oklahoma’s 77 counties, every year that he is in office.
At 3:30 p.m. today, Medford, with a population of about 1,200 and the seat of Grant County in north central Oklahoma, capped that Sooner State tour. The insurance roundtable discussion there was Doak’s fourth of the day, with prior stops for similar talks in Kingfisher, Major and Alfalfa counties.
“I’m grateful for the opportunity to connect with Oklahomans in all parts of this great state,” Doak said. “While some issues are universal, the people of a state the size and scope of Oklahoma can’t be singularly categorized. The needs of those in Kingfisher, Fairview, Cherokee and Medford where we visited today can be very different than the needs those who live in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. But the people in rural counties don’t always have their voices heard.
“It’s my job as a public servant to be sure that Oklahomans everywhere benefit from my work as their insurance commissioner. I want the people who live in here in Grant County to know that while their needs may sometimes be different than the needs in Oklahoma County or Tulsa County, they aren’t less important.”
Typical speaking engagements and the routine business of the chief executive of a state agency with offices in Oklahoma City and Tulsa made it easy for Commissioner Doak to check a few counties off the list.
Other locations the first-term insurance commissioner soon found himself visiting out of necessity – starting with a trip to view snowstorm-damaged docks and other structures in the northeast part of the state around Grand Lake in February, a month after taking office. In April, the catastrophe scene had shifted southeast to Atoka County, where a tornado killed two people in the Tushka area. Tornadoes, other forms of severe weather, wildfires and now earthquakes have kept the commissioner moving throughout the state on emergency business all year long.
Nevertheless, most of Oklahoma’s counties, including some where catastrophe had already called, were visited in coordinated one- and two-day excursions, typically with roundtable insurance discussions scheduled in three or four counties per day. The roundtables were organized with local help, often from the Chamber of Commerce. Participants included professionals whose businesses are affected by the Oklahoma Insurance Department, particularly insurance agents, hospital and health care administrators, funeral directors, appraisers, abstract and title company personnel, and licensed appraisers. Also included were municipal and county elected leaders and public safety officials, especially fire chiefs.
Doak also delivered the OID’s message to consumers via live or recorded visits to local radio stations in several communities along the way.
“This was never meant to be just a race around the state,” Doak said. “We made sure every county visit included a substantive discussion of the issues with people who are among those most affected by the Insurance Department’s work. Our goal is to do this every year.”
Participants in roundtable discussions raised dozens of issues, some of widespread interest and others affecting only particular communities. Questions and concerns arose statewide on topics such as: Oklahoma’s high rate of uninsured motorists (an estimated 24 percent, tied for third-worst nationally); rising insurance premiums due to severe weather and other catastrophic losses in the state; controversial federal health care reforms; workers’ compensation reform in Oklahoma; fraud, including among prepaid funeral plans; and the use of credit-scoring to determine insurance rates.
In rural communities, other concerns included crop insurance, equipping and staffing volunteer fire departments, and access to ambulance services.
Doak used the opportunity to build relationships with those elected to represent each community at the capitol, as well. State senators and representatives from each area were invited to join the roundtable talks and many of them did, providing a valuable link to the Legislature that would be asked to author, debate and pass most major reform measures impacting the insurance industry and its consumers.
“I appreciate the commissioner going around the state and holding these meetings, getting to know the people and the problems they face in their own communities,” said state Rep. Joe Dorman, D-Rush Springs, who participated in roundtable discussions in several counties. “Too often, what happens in Oklahoma City or Tulsa won’t have the same effect in Anadarko or a town like Cement or Cyril.”
Republican state Sen. Ron Justice, who joined Commissioner Doak for a roundtable in the senator’s hometown of Chickasha, agreed with Dorman.
“I’m glad to see that the people have an opportunity to sit down with Commissioner Doak and share their concerns with him face-to-face,” Sen. Justice said. “It’s a great opportunity for me also to sit in and listen to concerns that businesspeople have about the area and hopefully that will allow us to make improvements as we deal with legislation in the future.”
Until Doak made such visits a personal commitment, sightings of an insurance commissioner were typically few and far between throughout much of the state. Locals attending the insurance roundtable in Hollis – minutes from the Texas panhandle and about 50 miles closer to Amarillo than Oklahoma City – said that other than during campaigns the community hadn’t seen an insurance commissioner there since 1981. Insurance agent Walter White of Hugo, in the industry for 60 years, said the last insurance commissioner to visit that city on business prior to Doak was likewise 30 years ago or so.
“We sure are a long way from Oklahoma City (and) it was probably the first time I remember the insurance commissioner being here since I can’t remember when,” White said. “(Commissioner Doak) spoke to us, answered our questions, and I thought it was great.”
State Rep. R.C. Pruett, D-Antlers, participated in the roundtable in Pushmataha County, just north of Hugo and Choctaw County.
“We’re somewhat off the beaten path,” Pruett said. “I tell people we’re so far out in the country that we don’t get ‘Saturday Night Live’ until Monday afternoon. So people here get excited when a statewide official comes to town. It doesn’t happen that often.
“People were very eager to hear what the commissioner had to say. He was very open and very informative about what he hopes to accomplish while in office. And as they say on Broadway, he received rave reviews.”
Doak discovered there’s a “left-out” feeling among citizens in far-flung counties around the state.
“We are so far away from the city,” echoed Kim Mizer, president of the Cimarron County Chamber of Commerce in the tip of the Oklahoma panhandle. “With his visit, (Commissioner Doak) gave us a face to put on his office, plus contacts for people we can reach when we do have a problem.”
Doak, whose insurance career began serving individual customers as a local agent for Farmers Insurance Group, tells almost anyone who will listen that he hates being tied to a desk. He’d rather be out making contact with the public. The 77-county tour was the commissioner’s way of walking the talk.
“In business I always believed that if I wasn’t having lunch with my clients, somebody else was,” Doak said. “But now that I’m a public servant, there’s a twist. As insurance commissioner, if I’m not meeting the people of Oklahoma in the communities where they live and work, then maybe nobody is. And when it comes to making government accessible to the people, ‘nobody’ just doesn’t cut it.”
(Click here to view Commissioner Doak's online gallery of statewide insurance roundtable events.)
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About the Oklahoma Insurance Department
The Oklahoma Insurance Department, an agency of the State of Oklahoma, is responsible for the education and protection of the insurance-buying public and for oversight of the insurance industry in the state.
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For more information contact:
Glenn Craven
(405) 522-1769
e-mail: glenn.craven@oid.ok.gov