‘I took over a broken agency’
♦ John King talks about his role as Insurance Commissioner
Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King was in town recently to speak to members of the Calhoun Rotary Club.
King, who retired in February after 41 years of military service at the rank of Major General, is no stranger to Gordon County, having started his military service in the 1/108th Armor Georgia National Guard unit once headquartered in Calhoun.
“I had the pleasure of starting as an enlisted soldier in the 108th in a tank unit,” King said.
Later working his way up through the ranks as an officer, King would eventually command the 1/108th as a lieutenant colonel — including leading the unit through its 200506 Iraq deployment
— and would later command Georgia’s entire 48th Brigade as a brigadier general before moving on to work with NORAD and the US Norther Command.
“It was a great adventure, and a great opportunity to serve,” King said. “No other country in the world would allow somebody who wasn’t born there to go from private to general officer ... from patrolman, to chief of police, to commissioner of insurance. No other country. It’s impossible ... Every once in a while we should reflect on the goodness of this country, and the opportunities it gives us.”
King came into his current position during a time of turmoil caused by corrupt leadership.
“I took over a broken agency,” King said. “The agency was flat on its back. The people were just demoralized, and they were aimless.”
Former commissioner Jim Beck has since been sentenced to federal prison after he was convicted of taking over $2,500,000 from the Georgia Underwriting
Association while in office. Another former commissioner, John Oxendine, was arraigned on federal charges of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, indicted by a federal grand jury last May.
“When the Governor asked me to serve as Insurance Commissioner, I said ‘Governor, I don’t know anything about insurance,’” King said. “He told me, ‘well, we’ve had people who knew a lot about insurance, and they haven’t done a very good job for Georgia.’”
Since the business of his office affects all Georgians in some was, King said it’s a job he takes very seriously.
“You’re required to have insurance ... to drive a car, to finance a home, to start a business,” King said. “So you ought to have someone who is serious about the job of managing the insurance industry.”
A native of Mexico, King is the state’s first Hispanic statewide office holder when he was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp in July of 2019. This past November he won a statewide election for a new term.
“My father is from Nashville, Georgia ... Berrien County,” King said, adding that his dad joined the Merchant Marines at the beginning of World War II, and retired in Mexico.
King graduated from Albany High School, and joined the Atlanta Police Department in the mid-1980s, and recalled one especially notable job task as a young officer.
“I started my career in high-crime foot patrol on Auburn Avenue,” King said. “One of my duties was to walk Coretta Scott King to her car every night. Having grown up in Mexico, I didn’t understand the tension ... and she took the time to really talk to me about why it was important for a police officer to own the responsibility for the security of their community.”
He would eventually
become the police chief of Doraville.
Another task of Georgia’s Insurance Commissioner is to serve as the state’s Fire Marshall, a job the retired lawman said — with a smile — required him to cut back on firefighter jokes.
Perhaps two aspects of his duties he was originally more familiar with when taking over as Insurance Commissioner, King has charge of a pair of law enforcement agencies — insurance fraud investigators, and arson investigators. King said he has worked to revamp how his department serves the state’s fire departments in recent years.
“We don’t need a super fire chief for the State of Georgia ... we don’t need that bureaucracy,” King said. “You’ve got some very competent local fire chiefs here, and all they need is for me to help figure out where they have gaps and bring resources for them.”
King said one of those resources has been the spreading of regional arson investigators throughout the state for more rapid service when needed.
“No fire chief has to wait more than 90 minutes to have a K-9 with an investigator at a suspicious fire scene,” King said. “We want to bring value to what our office provides to the citizens
of Georgia.”
Vouching for King’s efforts, Calhoun Fire Department Deputy Chief Terry Mills said he’s been able to tell a difference in the availability of resources locally.
“We used to wait sometimes two or three days for a K-9 unit to show up on a fire scene,” Mills said. “We know now that there are officers and K-9 units available in our area. Same with inspections. They didn’t have enough inspectors for those, so we struggled to get them into our area, but he fixed that problem.”
King said a major function of his office is to help keep the cost of insurance down for Georgia consumers.
“We make sure insurance companies are behaving according to the law, and hold them accountable,” King said. “We’ve been able to recover over $49 million back to consumer pockets from our investigations. So when you’re having a problem with your insurance company and they’re slow to pay, or they’re not treating you right, I ask you to pick up the phone, send an email, or send a message to us.”
Also touching on the new Georgia healthcare exchange, King said he believes the new Georgia Access site will help cut through some of the red tape citizens may have experienced at the federal level.
“We’re tired of the federal government’s Affordable Care Act, and a lack of quality choices,” King said. “So Georgia’s going to break off from the ACA, and we’re going to do our own exchange. Georgia’s going to manage it. We’re accountable. If we don’t do our job ... if we fail, you toss us out. Instead of having some unknown bureaucrat in Washington D.C. trying to figure out how one cookie-cutter solution applies to the whole country.”
King said he hopes a more localized marketplace will help find coverage solutions for all Georgians.
“We feel that we can provide better choices for Georgians,” King said. “Whether you are the working poor, and need subsidies, we need to cover those. We also need to make sure we identify our veterans and get them into the VA.”
According to King, uninsured people forced to use the state’s emergency rooms for primary care is driving up the cost for all Georgians, so making sure everyone is covered in some way will save everyone money.
“You end up paying for all of that indigent care,” King said. “We need to try and figure out how to get people signed up for as much as they can afford, and to understand that we’re going to have to cover some of the gaps — especially for
our poorest Georgians. Because right now, just kicking this can down the road, we’re breaking the bank. And the federal government just keeps on printing money. Sooner or later, the bill comes due.”
King ended by pointing out several of the veterans in the room he served alongside, and saying they help keep him on track even today — including his former commander retired Major General Terry Nesbitt, and current Calhoun City Councilman Ray Denmon.
“I have a debt, not only to this country and this state ... but to these guys who helped raise me to who I am today,” King said. “I can’t let them down. They’ve invested in raising the kind of person I have become, and the opportunities that I’ve had. I never want them to feel shame that they served alongside me. That’s what keeps my compass pointed north.”