Two well-known acts of the Democratic-majority Congress of 2009-2010 have begun to pay off – literally – for Americans. One is the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB sets and enforces standards for bank dealings with customers. Last month, the CFPB issued its first enforcement order, following a probe of Capital One Financial Corporation. Capital One was misleading and pressuring customers to buy "payment protection" or "credit monitoring," when one would call in to activate one's credit card. Under the order, the bank will give each swindled customer a full refund, with interest, automatically – no claim form needed. That adds up to about $140M for about 2 million customers. Also, Capital One will pay $25M in fines to the CFPB, and an additional $45M, including restitution for unfair billing practices, levied by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The other well-known act of Congress that is putting money back in Americans' wallets is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as "Obamacare", which has set standards for medical insurance. One of those standards is that a medical insurance company pay out 80% (85% for large employer plans) of the premiums it gets for actual health care, not administrative costs and profits. Over the past month or two, about 12.8 million customers have been getting $1.1B in rebates, automatically, from insurance companies that had a shortfall in actual health care spending last year. Neither of these acts would have passed without push from President Obama, so these fair payments to Americans add two bullet points to the president's re-election resumé. By contrast, Mitt Romney, Obama's opponent in the presidential race, has said that he would repeal both the CFPB and the PPACA.
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By Quinn Hungeski,TheParagraph.com, Copyright (CC BY-ND) 2012