Editor:

No one is protecting the people of Wyoming as they are consistently screwed by the health insurance industry. Now is your time to act.

During the past 20 years, our Wyoming Legislature has been heavily lobbied by the insurance industry to little by little strip the Wyoming Insurance Commissioner's office of its ability to control the insurance companies doing business in Wyoming. When a health insurance company denies a claim or defrauds you, the Wyoming Insurance Commission can do nothing but write letters. The Commissioner is nothing more than a figurehead - just the way the insurance companies want it.

If you want justice dealing with a health insurance company, you have to go to federal court, where insurance companies hide behind insurance industry sponsor regulations called ERISA. ERISA, the Employment Retirement Income Security Act, has very little to do with health insurance except to protect the insurance companies from the insured citizens they abuse.

This 34-year-old act, signed into law by Gerald Ford, keeps you from any punitive recourse against the health insurance industry for bad faith, fraud, or just plain screwing you. All you can recover, if successful (as well as the prerequisites of hiring your attorney and expending lots of time and money), is your out-of-pocket health care cost.

There is no punishment for bad faith or just being mean which profit seeking health insurance companies are prone to do. You can do nothing in the Wyoming courts where you could be heard by a jury of your Wyoming peers.

We have a window of opportunity during this election year to demand commitments from our candidates for the state House and the state Senate to rejuvenate the Insurance Commissioner's office and re-empower it to control the insurance companies doing business in Wyoming.

Only with state regulatory empowerment can the Wyoming Insurance Commissioner obtain a just response from an insurance company when mediating a claim from a Wyoming citizen. The Commissioner can prevent insurance companies from abusing the people of Wyoming.

If the Wyoming senators and representatives do not give the Insurance Commissioner's office power, who is going to protect the people of Wyoming? The answer is no one.

Contact your candidates today.

Dr. BRENT BLUE, Wilson