No-fault? It's Legislature's fault

By A TIMES EDITORIAL
Published August 10, 2007

If Florida lawmakers want to give up on no-fault automobile insurance, they at least owe motorists a good-faith effort to come up with something better. But just weeks before the law is set to expire, they plan to do nothing at all and leave Florida in a state that Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink accurately describes as "mass confusion." This is not legislative leadership; this is abdicating responsibility at the public's expense.

Hospital emergency rooms are being told to patch up accident victims who will have no insurance and to simply absorb an estimated $350-million a year in lost payments. Insurance companies are required by Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty to notify customers in "a clear and unambiguous manner" about the law, except the state tells insurers to follow their own legal advice on how many coverages will be affected. Health insurers are on the hook for treatments that were previously covered by automobile "personal injury protection," but they have no way to gauge the impact on their rates.

To top it off, the state Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles is now saying that allowing PIP to expire will also remove the requirement that motorists prove they have property-damage coverage. But, and this is where the tale begins to feel more like a comic tragedy, many of the insurance industry lawyers dispute that interpretation and Commissioner McCarty has ventured no formal opinion.

"We want to do what we can to make sure that consumers will know the choices they face," says Tara Klimek, a spokeswoman for Sink. "But I can tell you we asked Colorado how it went there when they made the change, and it was mass confusion."

While Sink seems to be doing what she can in her role as CFO, the Legislature seems determined to pull the rug out from under no-fault insurance. They have had plenty of chances to either reform the system, which is rife with fraud in South Florida and other areas, or create a new one. But though lawmakers have met 13 times since first establishing an expiration date and passed an extension last year only to see it vetoed by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, they are unwilling to publicly tackle the issue again before the Oct. 1 deadline. They would rather avoid wading into a public fight involving insurers, doctors and lawyers and putting the campaign contributions from those interests at risk than help ordinary motorists.

Lawmakers have one last chance, during a scheduled Sept. 18 special session on the state budget, to extend the life of no-fault or replace it with a medical payment provision that would at least protect hospital emergency rooms that have no choice but to treat accident victims. At a minimum, lawmakers could clarify whether they intended to abolish both the personal injury and property damage coverage requirement.

Nothing seems likely to happen, though, because the debate has become so paralyzing that even some PIP supporters are now eager to wash their hands of it. The Senate has asked for an analysis of the impact of repeal, but the report is not due until after the special session. Gov. Charlie Crist favors extending no-fault insurance but has done little publicly to make that happen.

The governor needs to get more involved and insist that legislators tackle the no-fault insurance issue during the special session. Without no-fault or an equivalent coverage, there will be more uninsured drivers, more lawsuits after accidents and more unpaid hospital bills. That is not in Florida's best interests.

[Last modified August 9, 2007, 21:41:31]