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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 13, 1977)
Page 6 THE BATTALION WEDNESDAY, JULY 13, 1977 Insurance industry being threatened United Press International NEW YORK — The property and casualty industry is being weakened dangerously by loss of capital, the chairman of Continental Corp. of New York says. “We have less capital today than we had at the end of 1972,” John B. Ricker Jr., said. “We are losing capital at a time when we need to increase our capi tal from the present level of $22 bil lion to $40 billion by 1985.” Ricker said the property and casualty industry needs to have about $1 in capital for every $3 worth of insurance premiums it col lects, “and it appears that, at the present rate of growth of 11 per cent annually, we will need to write $120 billion worth of insurance yearly by 1985.” Excessive and unrealistic regula tion and some “fantastic” disincen tives for writing insurance are dry ing up the industry’s capital sources at the moment, Ricker said. He said the “disincentives” to writing property and casualty insur ance, unwisely mandated by state governments, will add up to $900 Firemen trained in classrooms BUD WARD VOLKSWAGEN INC. 693 3311 NOW OPEN JIM’S PAWN SHOP Bryan, Tx. “We buy & sell" Opan 8 a.m.-6 p.m. 319 N. Bryan million worth of losses this year and the trend is accelerating. Ricker cited a law in the state of Hawaii that compels the companies to provide automobile insurance free of charge for 8,000 motorists who are on welfare — 5 per cent of whom have more than one car to the family. The cost of this mandated additional burden to the insurance companies operating in Hawaii is about $217 per car per year, Ricker said. The Hawaii legislature appointed a committee early last year to make a further study of this situation. Ricker said the insurance com panies’ lawyers had decided that the legislature had the right to mandate this free insurance for welfare clients so long as it allowed the companies to charge other motorists rates high enough to pay for the service. Other mandated disincentives, he said, include laws and rulings re quiring successful insurance com panies to contribute to insolvency funds to be used to take over weak or mismanaged companies that get into financial difficulties. “What worries me,” Ricker said, “is that somewhere along the line we will have a house of cards situa tion wherein the failure of one large company will trigger a big chain of failures.” In theory^ Ricker said, the insur ance companies are supposed to be able to recapture all these mandated subsidies by passing them on to the public. “But in the competition of the marketplace, we aren’t able to do so,” he said. He said no other industry has been asked to carry the kind of leg ally mandated burdens that have been imposed on the insurance companies. The solution, Ricker said, is for all public social needs, including insur ance for the needy, to be paid for directly by the government, not in directly by private business. Sun Theatres 333 University 846-9808 Super-Grody Movies Double-Feature Every Week Next, he said, the regulatory focus on the insurance industry should be returned to solvency of the companies rather than to pricing and consumerism. Special Midnight Shows Friday & Saturday $3 per person No one under 18 Ladies Free $3 With This Ad BOOK STORE & 25c PEEP SHOWS AGGIE BLOOD DRIVE TODAY & TOMORROW MSC Two can ride cheaper than one., A PufcBc Serve* oi Th* MBpanne i The Advertenq Carol Sail Firemen’s Training School evokes in most people around College Sta tion and Bryan a vision of towering columns of smoke, or mountains of billowing flame into which firemen appear to walk. It’s much more, assures Chief Henry D. Smith, though the life saving and life property-protecting tactics firemen learn at Brayton Field are vital. The less glamorous and often over looked facets of the mammoth schools are just as important. In the last two vears, fire service administrators have been in the classroom for the entire school, studying executive development concepts, along with other subjects. Instructors like to point out that such training is just as important, because more and more fire service managers must work with local, state and federal government agencies, with mayors and city councilmen. “Unless they have the expertise in management,” one spokesman re marked, “the fire department — and the people it serves — will be shortchanged. ” The 48th Firemen’s Training School that starts July 25 has its less-noticeable segments too. One is executive-type training for fire service staff officers, a level re moved from the fire chief or marshal. “These are people who will be come fire chiefs and other top ad ministrators,’ explained Chief Her- shel Sharp of the Fire Protection Training Division. The Texas Engi neering Extension Service division coordinates the three weeks of schools that this year expects 4,650 participants. The students will attend classes on fire loads, fire flow, budgets, man power utilization, techniques of training and preparation of specifica tions for fire department equipment. The FTS students who won’t get smoke-grimed will go through a leadership problem, in which at titudes and motivations will be brought out. “They’ll learn how to give orders, ” Sharp said. A critical part of the all classroom training will stress fire fighter safety. Twenty-six firemen have died in the line of duty in the last five years, which in survivor be nefits alone amounts to a $2.3 million loss to taxpayers. Special instructors will come in for the training. They will include de partment chiefs at Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth and Abilene. Jim L. Badgett, training consultant with the Texas Commission of Fire Protec tion Personnel Standards and Edu cation in Austin, will address the fledgling administrators. At training sheds near where firemen will be struggling through smoke and mud with hoses, trainees will learn the operation and mainte nance of pumpers. While doing it, they will rebuild four pumpers that later will go back into use in Livingston, Bellville, Elkhart and Del Rio. Tom Robertson of the FTS staff added that many such pieces of equipment have been revitalized and returned to the line while fur nishing training at Texas Firemen’s Training Schools. Lilly ICE CREAM y 2 gal. ctn. 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