Injured Worker Advocate Dina Padilla To Announce Run For CA Insurance Commission At FAC

Injured worker advocate and former Kaiser worker Dina Padilla from the Sacramento area will announce her run for the California Insurance Commission office in the P&F Party Primary on 9/9/2009

Padilla has been battling the systemic corruption of the insurance industry in California in workers compensation and other areas for 21 years and has also been exposing the toxic dump site cover-ups at the Downey Toxic Dump Site where the Downey Movie Studio and Kaiser Downey Hospital Complex has been built. Injured workers at both sites have been sickened by the highly toxic dump site yet the Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and California's Attorney General Jerry Brown have both refused to prosecute toxic dump site developer Stuart Lichter for workers compensation fraud.

Padilla has also been sued by Lichter in a SLAPP suit to silence her from publicizing the dangerous conditions at the Downey toxic site and Licheter's role. Padilla is being defended by Gonzalez,Leigh Law in San Francisco. At present Lichter is stalling on being deposed by Padilla's attorneys.

Dina Padilla will make her announcement at the California Fraud Assessment Commission meeting in Sacramento on 9/9/2009. This commission which has been presented with evidence of fraud and the refusal of California District Attorneys to prosecute fraud by insurance companies and employers such as Pam Marrone, who owned the biotech company Agraquest in Davis California and committed fraud to cover-up the injuries of biotech worker David Bell. Padilla is California President of VOICES California Chapter and President of B.E.S.T. Battered Employees Support Team.

Padilla will also call for the resignation of Fraud Assessment Commission chair William Zachry. Zachry is also the vice president of Risk Management for Safeway Inc. and has personally prevented injured Safeway Inc. workers from testifying at the Commission about the refusal of self-insured Safeway Inc. from providing healthcare to workers injured at this corporation. In a massive cost shifting scam, Safeway Inc. and other companies and insurance corporations have forced workers to go on SSI and other public agencies to limit their own liability. This has meant a escalating increase in costs to taxpayers, local, state and Federal agencies who end up paying for healthcare for injured workers.

Padilla has also condemned an article by Zachry in which he explains that injured workers should not organize as injured workers and takes the side of the insurance companies in fighting their struggle for proper benefits. http://www.riskandinsurance.com/story.jsp?storyId=235113079&query=Zachry
Zachry has been personally responsible for helping to shape SB 899 which cut permanent disability benefits for injured workers by 50% and also allowed corporate trade group ACOEM to have their anti-labor and corporate driven policies written into the California legislation. Under this legislation for example Acupuncture was eliminated from rehabilitation treatment and instead this ACOEM grouping pushed drugs benefiting the drug industry which ACOEM represents.

Padilla has called for the elimination of the insurance industry in healthcare and supports a single payer system in California in which all funds collected for healthcare would go to healthcare providers instead of insurance company executives, their stockholders and the workers compensation industry.

For information on her campaign email
Dinapadilla [at] gmail.com