Academic aura for insurance propaganda organ.
In its continuing quest to cloak its efforts in a more consumer-friendly disguise, the insurance industry has recruited numerous academic institutions and professors to front for it. But in the process of accepting insurance industry money, the recipients almost always destroy their own credibility as scholars and tarnish the reputation of the college or university with which they are affiliated through their one-sided “research and analysis.”
An interesting example is the University of Wisconsin’s “Auto Accident Compensation Project” (AACP), which publishes a newsletter and holds occasional conferences both of which are thinly-veiled insurance industry advocacy organs.
Numerous ACCP publications supporting the insurance industry’s view of insurance reform, and a conference it convened in Washington, D.C. attended by the usual industry front groups, led FTCR President Harvey Rosenfield to write University officials requesting detailed information on the project and its funding sources.
Read the letter from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Schroeder disclosing insurance industry funding to AACP.
Rosenfield asked the officials to defend the one-sided, partisan and advocacy-oriented nature of the activities conducted by a project sponsored by a university, which is supposed to provide an impartial environment for purposes of public education. However, university officials refused to provide all but the most general answers to the inquiry.
