As the 2012 Florida state legislative session winds down, lawmakers are still wrestling 
over what would be the best compromise plan for reforming the state's Personal Injury Protection (PIP) law, which all sides agree has driven up auto insurance rates for all Floridians.
The FL House of Representatives has offered up House Bill (HB) 119, what you might call an "extreme makeover" proposal, while Senate Bill (SB) 1860 features a more measured set of reforms.
The current "no-fault" PIP law provides all motorists with a minimum $10,000 level of coverage. Its original intention was twofold: to ensure that drivers injured in vehicular accidents had some reasonable level of protection, while ridding the civil court system of thousands of small claims cases.
Then that pesky old "Law Of Unintended Consequences" came into play.
Crime rings sprang up to take advantage of the law, staging fraudulent accidents, filing quick claims and bilking the system out of countless millions of dollars. As a result, The Insurance Consumer Advocate's Working Group on PIP Reform reports that leading insurers like State Farm, Geico and Progressive have raised PIP rates anywhere from 50-77 percent since 2009.
At the same time, some consumer advocates have complained that insurance companies are more aggressive and less communicative than ever about denying claims. And some legislators complain that too often it's the state's Medicaid system, and not the insurance companies, that end up paying medical costs for accident victims.
It's easy to see then, why the one thing that they do agree on in Tallahassee is that the system is broken in its present form. Ah, but how best and far to go in efforts to fix it?
In what some see as an "insurance industry-friendly" plan, HB 119 would scrap the PIP system and replace it with Emergency Care Coverage (ECC). Only injuries diagnosed by a physician in a hospital emergency room within 72 hours of an accident would be covered. Chiropractors, acupuncturists and massage therapists would be ineligible for PIP payments. Insurers would be allowed to examine and question injury claimants under oath - even if they weren't filing a lawsuit. And a new attorney fee schedule would prescribe how much lawyers could earn in suits against insurance companies.
The Senate alternative, SB 1860, is seen by some as being a little tougher on insurance companies, a little less so on injury victims and their lawyers, with more broader focus on reforming the overall process. Key features include:
• Instead of hospital ERs, care can be received at any licensed medical clinic
• Enactment of medical fee schedule to control fraudulent clinic charges
• Chiropractor payments allowed, but not massage therapist or acupuncturist
• Long-form crash reports required whenever physical discomfort is claimed
• Police investigators could supplement reports with testimony/affidavits
• Increase in auto insurance fraud prevention activities
• Insurers required to repay state for some of benefits paid by Medicaid
• Insurers required to give explanations when claims are denied
With three weeks left in the legislative session, chances are that the Senate and House will reach some kind of compromise and pass a PIP reform bill - which Governor Rick Scott, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty have all made clear is a top legislative priority in 2012.
As one of Florida's most experienced and successful law firms specializing in representing motor vehicle accident victims, Thomas & Pearl Injury Attorneys supports efforts to root out insurance fraud and abuse, and will continue to focus on providing injury victims with the highest level of ethical legal representation.
