Insurance

Workers Compensation Drug Repackaging | Automobile Insurance | Hurricane Taxes | Long-Term Care Insurance
Session Priorities Index

Print Section

Automobile Insurance

AIF SUPPORTS legislation to reduce Personal Injury Protection (PIP) claims costs.

Under Florida’s no-fault law, which has been in effect since January 1, 1972, owners of motor vehicles are required to purchase $10,000 of Personal Injury Protection (PIP) insurance which compensates persons injured in accidents, regardless of fault. Notwithstanding several legislative reforms to the law, PIP premiums continue to be unnecessarily high because of increased litigation, few cost controls for medical services, and few effective measures to reduce rampant fraud and abuse. Florida has a sordid history of PIP reform in which every reform to reduce fraud has been greeted with new schemes by the unscrupulous, and efforts to reduce medical costs have been greeted with additional litigation and increased utilization of services.

PIP fraud, including billing for medical services that were never rendered and staged accidents, amounts to an $800 million tax on Florida residents in the form of increased premiums. Florida tops all states in the United States for staged accidents and other schemes to defraud automobile insurers. PIP was enacted to minimize litigation; however, the opposite is occurring. PIP-related lawsuits and settlements have more than doubled since 2008. AIF urges the Legislature to adopt measures including HB 523 by Rep. Workman (R-Melbourne), HB 119 by Rep. Jim Boyd (R-Bradenton), and SB 254 by Sen. Mike Bennett (R-Bradenton) addressing the above issues and require a mandatory review of the effectiveness of such measures in three years by sunsetting Florida’s no-fault law effective July 1, 2015.