Florida PIP; One Newspaper Call For Repairs - Not Replacement.

The Orlando Sentinel weighs in on the upcoming battle that will surely pit the big business auto insurers against your local doctor and, if you drive a car, against you.

Pointing out that if you "Remove the PIP requirement, motorists will pay substantially more for their health insurance, which increasingly would cover auto injuries. More deadbeats also will drive without insurance, forcing others to pay for their care after accidents".

The Orlando Sentinel is calling for repairs of the PIP system, not replacing the system with something else. "Where it looks like you'll save on auto insurance, you'll end up paying more for health insurance", points out the newspaper.

The auto insurers also would love to replace a diminished personal injury protection (PIP) system with one mandating more expensive — and more profitable — bodily-injury protection.  Let's remember, this is big business and it's all about big profits.  Under the current system, last year (2010) State Farm's profits surpassed the billion dollar mark, up from $900 million in 2009.

So, with profits so high why all the complaints? Well, quite frankly it's a chance to change the rules of the game to favor big insurance even greater than they do now.

The Orlando Sentinel has it right, don't scrap the current PIP program, rather have our legislators roll up their sleeves and fix what's broken in the current system.  And, quite frankly it's not much. No matter what business, industry or profession, you will find a few bad apples.  But to throw out an entire basket of good apples because there are a few bad ones seems like a waste of a lot of good apples.  It's time for our legislature to pick out the bad apples and find out how they got there, then fix that part of the system.

If you had one bad employee would you close your business? or would you retrain or even re-hire a new one?

For more on the Orlando Sentenal's sentiments, click here for their entire article.

FPIB

United Automobile Insurance Company Tactics Get The Boot By The Supreme Court of Florida & Set New Legal Precident

No longer can an insurance company use a "No-Show" at an IME as the basis to deny a claim. Since EUO's are not part of the PIP statute, one can argue that a "No-Show" at an EUO also cannot be used as the basis to deny a claim.

The decision is still hot off the presses as it came down earlier today. To see all the details click on this link Cluster Medical Center a/a/o Maximo Masis v United Automobile Insurance Company

United Automobile Insurance Company Fighting Fraud??? Are You Kidding Me???

How is it that an insurer that has been caught denying most claims without any justification is now fighting fraud? This is like the fox guarding the hen house. Many doctor refuse to treat those insured by United because United Auto blindly denies so many claims (Go dig through your DVD library and re-watch the movie: The Rainmaker with Matt Damon and you'll understand what we're talking about). For no good cause, United Auto forces their insured to go to “their doctors” to be examined. Their "I.M.E." doctors almost always say care is not needed. Don't your find it funny that people get into car accidents and are ALMOST ALWAYS are deemed to be 'okay' and their benefits cut off.  Tell me that’s not fraud...

United Auto forces most of their insured to go to the home office of United Auto to give a recorded statement simply for making a claim. UAIG does this because when an insured does not go to their doctor or to their statement, United Auto can use this "failure to attend" as a basis to deny their claim and deny their insurance benefits. United Auto is great at taking money from the hard working insured people of Florida, but they have not figured out how to pay claims without putting up hurdle after hurdle to deny claims......

For those that they (UAIG and others) legitimately catch perpetrating fraud - well, kudos to them. But we'll reserve the kudos for UIAG and others, and give them out on a case by case basis. Although there's the appearance of fighting fraud on the surface, it's all about not paying out benefits as the foundation of their efforts. For some not to strange reason, we're still thinking about that fox and the hen house thing. That being said, the stance of the Florida Personal Injury Blog is that all fraud should be stamped out. We'd like to see those with real injuries have their rights protected under the law and the terms of their insurance contracts; and their injuries treated until they are back to "normal" or at least until they've reached maximum medical improvement - with only necessary treatments and diagnostic tests done.


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