Delaware Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart wants to meet privately in her office with the House and Senate insurance committees at a meeting closed to the public.
By Lee Williams
Delaware Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart has scheduled a private meeting with the House and Senate insurance committees to be held behind closed doors, just three hours before these lawmakers will hold public hearings to examine her management of the department.
In an e-mail sent Monday evening to the members of the two committees, Stewart appears to be trying to preempt some of the questions she’ll likely face during the public hearings.
“On behalf of Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart, CIR-ML you are invited to attend a meeting regarding the processes utilized by health insurers that resulted in the denial of medically necessary tests requested by a patient’s physician,” Stewart’s administrative assistant Lorielee Harrison wrote in the e-mail. “The meeting will be held April 13th, 10:00 am at the Delaware Department of Insurance Office, 841 Silver Lake Blvd., Dover, DE in the Sussex County Room. A number of doctors, professionals from the medical community, insurance company executives and others will join in via telephone to help answer questions and concerns. Please RSVP to Lorielee Harrison at 674-7305 or Lorilee.harrison@state.de.us if you plan to attend.”
The Caesar Rodney Institute tried to RSVP with Harrison. No response was received.
Neither Stewart nor her chief of staff Elliott Jacobson would address the propriety of the closed-door meeting. They were not willing to be interviewed for this story.
“Why not provide this vital information during the legislative hearings, so the public can be informed,” said Shaun Fink, CRI’s executive vice president. “This closed-door meeting confirms the insurance department is not operating in the public interest.”
Last week, the chair of the House Banking and Insurance Committee Rep. Bryon Short, D-Highland Woods, has said he learned about problems within Stewart’s department after CRI released its special report titled: “Delaware Dept. of Insurance: Not in the public Interest.”
Short has said he wants Stewart to publicly answer allegations of impropriety that were raised by the Caesar Rodney Institute, as well as allegations she failed to sufficiently regulate a local insurer.
CRI’s nine-month investigation found that Delaware taxpayers might not be getting their fair share of the millions of dollars the department receives in fees and taxes from insurance companies it regulates.
Based on numerous interviews, court records and nearly a dozen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, CRI uncovered questionable hiring practices, questionable contracts for campaign donors, failure to comply with state law and millions of taxpayer dollars paid to out-of-state consultants.
Short has said he had already planned to investigate whether Stewart ignored allegations Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware may have denied medical testing that was ordered by physicians. After reading CRI’s special report, he told the institute the issues it raised would be added to the agenda.
These public hearings are to be held at 1 p.m. on April 13 in the House Majority Hearing Room.
Contact investigative reporter Lee Williams at (302) 242-9272 or lee@caesarrodney.org
The Caesar Rodney Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-partisan research and educational organization and is committed to being a catalyst for improved performance, accountability, and efficiency in Delaware government.
© Copyright April 6, 2010, by the Caesar Rodney Institute
The arrogance of this incompetent, dishonest impostor and her toady Jacobson is breathtaking. That they have the unmitigated audacity to ask the legislators to come to the DOI office is just icing on the cake.
The main point of this outrage is no doubt to learn the agenda for the public hearing. Otherwise, that is without the benefit of Jacobson’s usual coaching and making her memorize the answers he feeds her, she will be revealed to all for the moron she is, as we’ve witnessed many times before when she went out unsupervised. I hope that whatever legislators plan to attend will realize that it will make them look VERY bad, and that they immediately and in no uncertain terms tell her where to get off.
Correction: The purpose of the closed door meeting is not just to learn the agenda of the public hearings because that has been stated. It is to learn whether and how far the legislators’ questions will go beyond the health insurers’ coverage denial issue and into the fraud and mismanagement of the DOI involving Karen Weldin Stewart that Lee Williams and the CRI have documented so conclusively in the original report published on March 31.
Time to contact those on the insurance committees in both houses. In the Senate, the members are Patricia Blevins, Cathy Cloutier, Bethany Hall-Long, Harris McDowell and David Sokola. I’m sure McDowell already has responded favorably to KWS if he has not already tipped her off to the line of questioning.
Members of the House committee that includes insurance are Bryon Short, Dennis E. Williams, Brad Bennett, Gerald Brady, Gerald Hocker, Deborah Hudson, Helene Keeley, Greg Lavelle, Mike Ramone and John Viola.
And the beat goes on…..
Now that the General Assembly is covered by the “Open Meetings” requirements of FOIA; and given the fact that the Insurance Department has always been covered by those provisions, perhaps someone could explain in basic terms how the “meeting before the meeting” serves the public interest – or for that matter, anyone’s interests other than the Commissioner’s interests.
If the “meeting before the meeting” is to actually be legal under the Code, true and meaningful public notice must be given pursuant to the terms of the Code. In this case, however, one wonders which entity is required to give that notice. Is it the Department of Insurance or the General Assembly – both House and Senate – or all of the above?
And if the “meeting before the meeting” is to conform to the open meeting requirements of FOIA, why have it at all? And why at the Insurance Department?
If the respective House and Senate committee Chairs do their jobs in the manner expected of them by Delaware’s voters, they would inform the Commissioner that she will be expected to appear before the Committe and that any matters to be discused will be discussed in open session at Legislative Hall in a venue where the majority of the general public expects such meetings to be held, if for no other reason than to give wider access to the public. And if they should decide not to do so, then the ranking members of the minority party should demand that the Chairs reverse thier decision, and do so on the record in the appropriate public forum.
Otherwise, the voting public will be left with the inevitable impression that mischief is afoot and that Delaware’s slide toward joining Illinois and New Jersey at the bottom of the ethics pile is fast becoming “The Delaware Way” – skuldugery as usual.
So much to learn and so little time to learn it……..
By the way, what does the Attorney General have to say about all of this?
“By the way, what does the Attorney General have to say about all of this?”
Oh, probably not much at all. Beau has proven himself incapable of dealing with more than one major event at a time, and recent events have shown that his office even has a hard time keeping murder prosecutions alive. (Hey, Lee, there’s another good story for you – why has this AG screwed up more murder cases in less than four years than Jane Brady did in three terms?)
KWS better watch out. Byron Short is a good-government guy and he will get to the bottom of this … if Lee doesn’t first.
I just listened to the podcast of the Lee Williams/Rick Jensen/KWS fun-fest on WDEL last week. Gawd, she is such a ditz.
And I can’t believe she was elected over John Brady, who is a seasoned politician and a good lawyer to boot. And Lee was right in the podcast – the difference between Matt Denn and KWS in the Department of Insurance is like the difference between night and day. Frankly, I’d rather have Denn back as Insurance Commissioner and Charlie Copeland as Lt. Gov…
[...] CRI puts up a blog post breaking what looks like news about a secret meeting that the IC is now having on the morning of 13 April. (13 April at 1 PM is when there is a Joint House and Senate committee meeting to discuss insurance issues.): In an e-mail sent Monday evening to the members of the two committees, Stewart appears to be trying to preempt some of the questions she’ll likely face during the public hearings. [...]