In the final minutes of the 2018 session, the Georgia House quietly ended a three-year fight to pass legislation making sure insurance agents receive a commission when they sell health coverage.
The measure, House Bill 64, was a priority of powerful House Rules Chairman John Meadows, R-Calhoun, a veteran insurance agent who has complained that some health insurers were shirking agents for the services they provide customers.
A similar bill pushed by Meadows to set a minimum commission for agents was scuttled in 2016 after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution raised questions about the persistent issue of part-time lawmakers pushing legislation that helps their profession.
The House Rules Committee decides what bills get a vote, and as chairman, Meadows is possibly the second-most-powerful member of the chamber, behind Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge.
Meadows' name was dropped as a co-sponsor of HB 64 last year. Its sponsor, state Rep. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire, said it would require health insurance companies to pay agents a commission in many situations. But it did not specify an amount, unlike the previous version, which set a 5 percent minimum commission.
As is typical of such legislation, lawmakers waited until the last minute to pass it.
HB 64 made it onto the Senate Rules Committee's final calendar of legislation to be considered for the 2018 session. State Sen. Fran Millar, R-Dunwoody, asked that it be put on because, he said, he had to go before Meadows' committee in hopes of getting one of his bills on the House agenda. "I think Chairman Meadows has a real interest in that," he said of HB 64.
It passed the Senate with no fanfare just before 8 the last night of the session. About a minute before midnight — the scheduled time for the session to end — with the House in a raucous mood, Blackmon asked the chamber to give it final approval.
The House had been passing legislation for 14 hours by that point.
Blackmon’s “explanation” of what colleagues were voting on took 16 seconds.
“This is the same measure that passed this body with one no vote last session,” Blackmon told colleagues. “The only change is a date, an effective date to accommodate this session. I ask for your favorable consideration and I yield the well.”
That earlier vote — with the explanation of what the bill did — occurred Feb. 9, 2017 — more than 400 days prior.
HB 64 passed 159-2 at 12:01 a.m., a minute after the scheduled time to end the session.
When he filed the bill last year, Blackmon said because the Affordable Care Act required all taxpayers to have health insurance, agents in small towns were handling more individual plans than before.
But insurance companies, he said, were not always paying commissions for those less profitable plans. The ACA mandated that insurance companies spend at least 80 percent of the money they took in from premiums on health care costs and improving quality, he said. The other 20 percent could go to administrative, overhead and marketing costs. Agents’ commissions, when they were paid at all, were being cut as companies sought to keep most of that 20 percent.
The Senate balked at the original bill, with the 5 percent minimum commission, in 2016. That chamber's Insurance and Labor Committee at first stalled it before Senate leadership stepped in to appease Meadows and made sure the bill made it out of committee. But it never got that final vote in the Senate.
Republican lawmakers have long criticized government attempts to involve itself in the marketplace, particularly on wage issues. And the fact that the idea came from a powerful House leader who sells insurance for a living raised questions.
When Blackmon brought the new version before the Senate committee this year, it got a warmer reception.
The panel's chairman, state Sen. Burt Jones, R-Jackson, the founder of an insurance business, wasn't supportive of the idea of setting a minimum rate for commissions in 2016. But he was OK with the new version.
“The fact is, over the last few years, you have fewer and fewer health (insurance) agents due to the fact that they have a hard time doing a lot of work for very little return,” Jones said.
Health insurance lobbyists didn’t speak on the bill and have declined to comment on it.
The afternoon after it won final passage, Blackmon said: “I hope it does what we were intending it to do. As with any law, that remains to be seen.”
“There were several bills that passed from 11:45 p.m. to 12:10 a.m. on Sine Die that were not discussed but instead the bill sponsor said: ‘It’s a good bill. You should vote yes,’ ” she said. “Not only is the process not transparent, but it also violates the rules of both chambers that are set at the beginning of the biennial sessions.”
Henderson said passage of the bill “proves that self-interest … is more important than following the law.”
“We see it time and time again: legislators with personal agendas who seem to care little about ethics and transparency when it comes to lining their pockets,” she said.
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