Mike Kreidler Commissioner

Washington (Western Zone) Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner PO Box 40256 Olympia, Washington 98504-0256 Phone: 360.725.7000 Fax: 360.586.3535 Street Address: 5000 Capitol Boulevard, SE Tumwater, Washington 98501

Mike Kreidler is Washington’s eighth insurance commissioner. A former member of Congress, he was first elected as insurance commissioner in 2000. He was re-elected to a third term in 2008.

A doctor of optometry with a master's degree in public health, Kreidler practiced at Group Health Cooperative in Olympia for 20 years. He served as a member of the Northwest Power Planning Council and a regional director for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

He retired as a lieutenant colonel from the Army Reserves with 20 years of service.

He has earned a reputation both as a staunch advocate for consumer protection and as a fair and balanced regulator. He was honored in 2009 with the "Excellence in Consumer Advocacy Award," presented by consumer advisors to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Among his accomplishments:

• Cutting excessive insurance rate increases by more than $300 million since 2000.
• Helping individual consumers recover about $10 million a year in denied and delayed insurance payments.
• Restoring troubled insurers to financial solvency.
• Rejecting a bid by one of the state's largest non-profit health insurers, Premera Blue Cross, to become a for-profit company.
• Regaining national accreditation for the office.
• Successfully fighting attempts by big out-of-state insurance companies to strip consumers of their legal protections.
• And working with state lawmakers to close a waiting-period loophole that was endangering the lives of organ-transplant patients.