The Threat of Big Insurance

The industry is hugely lucrative, with endless sums of cash to influence lawmakers. A new report tracks 25 years of health insurance industry donations.

https://prospect.org/2026/06/11/threat-of-big-insurance-lobbying-congress-donations/



Earlier this month, the California-based organization Consumer Watchdog uncovered an incredible scandal involving rideshare company Uber, which we covered on the most recent episode of my podcast Organized Money. The company pleaded to the California legislature last year that its insurance costs had spiked so much that the state needed to decrease required payouts on its mandated uninsured motorist coverage. “They literally said 45 cents out of every dollar is going to insurance,” Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, told me.

It turned out that these excessive insurance payments were going to a Hawaii-based company called Aleka that is run by Uber executives. Aleka was raising rates on Uber higher than other insurers, but that money just got transferred into a reserve bank account under Uber’s control. These excess reserves can be put toward Uber expansion plans while remaining untaxed, unlike company profits. Then this alleged cost center was used to convince the legislature to ease off on its insurance payout requirements.

Making the situation even crazier, Uber executives were given financial bonuses for getting that specific piece of legislation, SB 371, passed into law. Executives earning the bonuses included Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer and Kamala Harris’s brother-in-law, as well as Ramona Prieto, head of public policy for the western region and the actual executive who claimed that Uber was paying 45 cents out of every dollar for insurance, while eliding the fact that Uber was paying this money to itself. Prieto’s fiancé, Juan Rodriguez, is a partner with Bearstar Strategies, the mega-consultant in Sacramento that flipped from Eric Swalwell to Xavier Becerra’s campaign for governor when Swalwell’s campaign imploded. Uber spent millions of dollars on Becerra’s behalf in his successful primary run.



Uber also has a ballot measure that has qualified for the November ballot intended to fend off lawsuits brought by rideshare passengers hurt in accidents. It’s polling poorly relative to a competing measure that would increase passenger protections. But Uber is funneling tens of millions of dollars into the campaign, which is being run by … Bearstar Strategies and Rodriguez, Prieto’s fiancé. Rodriguez and Bearstar have already made $9.2 million off the ballot measure, according to the report. It’s a wild story, but it’s also kind of an old-school one. This isn’t about leveraging Uber’s technology or its ability to surveil riders and drivers. It’s just an insurance scheme, one of the oldest plays in the books.

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