The Legislature finds and declares as follows:

(a) That the business of insurance involves many transactions which have potential for abuse and illegal activities.

(b) That insurers and their policyholders ultimately pay the cost of fraudulent insurance claims.

(c) That the operation of insurance claims analysis bureaus would be to the benefit of the public, regulators, law enforcement, prosecutors, and insurers in suppressing and preventing insurance claims fraud.

(d) That the purpose of insurance claims analysis bureaus is to provide a data service to encourage the identification of utilization patterns by individuals or businesses who provide services in support of insurance claims, and by individual claimants themselves, in order to facilitate the identification and prevention of fraudulent activities.

(e) That promotion of an effective public-private partnership between the insurance industry and the commissioner to share data on suspected fraudulent claims is necessary to avoid unnecessary duplication and expense in reporting that data.

(f) It is the intent of the Legislature that, to promote a data-sharing partnership that is efficient and cost-effective, the commissioner and the bureau make every effort to obtain suspected fraudulent claims data from reporting and collection sources already in existence and supported by the insurance industry, by licensing those sources as claims analysis bureaus, as provided in this chapter.

(Amended by Stats. 1994, Ch. 1247, Sec. 4. Effective January 1, 1995.)