Auto Insurance
Pages (29) : « First ... « 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 [18] 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 » ... Last »ON POLITICS; Awaiting a Cut in Auto Rates? You’d Better Look Both Ways
Will all of New Jersey’s ‘’good drivers'’ find a 15 percent reduction in their auto insurance bills, now that the long-awaited rate cut is to take place in March?
To hear Governor Whitman tell it last week, that’s the case.
‘’Let me send a word to our auto insurance companies,'’ she said, looking directly into the television cameras during her annual budget address to lawmakers. ‘’This Governor and this Legislature are going to hold you to the promise we made last year. I meant what I said, and I said what I meant; you must save good drivers a full 15 percent.'’
But what the Governor did not say is that other recent changes to the state’s auto insurance system means that not all ‘’good drivers'’ can expect to find ‘’a full 15 percent'’ reduction this year.
According to their estimates, Whitman administration officials say only 52 percent of the state’s drivers are likely to receive a 15 percent reduction or more in their insurance bills when they renew their policies this year.
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A Rising Tide of Car Insurance Scams
OFFICER CHRISTOPHER FERRO of the Nassau County Police Department said his first case of auto insurance card fraud was about four years ago, when he and his partner, Officer John Tymeck, called the 800 number on the back of a card handed to them by a driver during an otherwise routine traffic stop. What they reached, Officer Ferro said, was a pay-by-the-minute sex line.
They noted that the car had Pennsylvania plates, and over the next few months they encountered more and more cars that were registered in Pennsylvania with forged insurance cards.
The problem receded for a while but picked up again about a year and half ago. Officer Ferro and his new partner, Officer Michael Ruggiero, said they had made about 40 arrests for fraudulent auto insurance documents in the past 18 months in the New Cassel area. In eastern Suffolk County, Investigator Dale Faro of the New York State Police said there had been at least 20 such arrests in the last six weeks.
‘’It has gotten much more widespread on Long Island, and all of sudden it has blossomed on the East End in a big way,'’ Investigator Faro said. He added that state troopers had been alerted to check for fraudulent insurance cards for cars with Pennsylvania plates and to be on the lookout for Pennsylvania plates that do not have stickers on them.
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Legislators Promise Overhaul of New Jersey Car Insurance
Two days after Gov. Christine Todd Whitman barely defeated a candidate who tried to harness voters’ anger over high auto insurance rates, Republican legislative leaders promised today that they would push through major proposals to reduce premiums. But, they said, the solution would not be Mrs. Whitman’s plan, and it would probably not happen until next year.
‘’I don’t think this discussion will be completed in the next six weeks,'’ said Paul DiGaetano, a Republican from Passaic who is the Assembly majority leader. ‘’And I’m not sure it should be, because the public is telling us they want a broad-based approach. They want a sweeping reform for auto insurance.'’
It is too soon to tell what path legislators will take on auto insurance. But one plan that legislators say they are seriously considering would essentially abolish the state’s no-fault insurance system.
New Jersey adopted a no-fault system in 1972 to help reduce lawsuits and premiums. Under the no-fault system, insurance companies automatically pay medical bills up to $250,000 for drivers involved in accidents without those drivers’ having to file a lawsuit or prove who was at fault.
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Insurance Rollbacks Are Upheld
The California Supreme Court yesterday upheld an insurance reform measure passed by California voters in 1988 that required insurance companies to roll back auto insurance premiums and gave the state insurance commissioner broad powers to control prices and profits.
The ruling clears the way for the commissioner to order insurance companies to refund as much as $1 billion to millions of California auto insurance customers. The court decision, which was unanimous, also affirmed the authority of the commissioner to require the 700 insurance companies operating in the state to obtain approval for rate changes for all property and casualty insurance that includes homeowner policies.
Before the proposition was passed, California insurance companies were free to charge whatever rates the market would bear, with no approval required from regulators before raising rates. Big Savings
“Over time, this will save consumers in the state billions of dollars in premiums,” said Harvey J. Rosenfield, an author of what was known as Proposition 103 in the state’s 1988 election and an advocate of insurance reform. He credited the proposition for a slight decline in auto insurance rates since 1988, down from double digit increases in previous years.
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Compulsory Auto Insurance
The State Superintendent of Insurance, Louis H. Pink, is to be commended for his courage in advocating compulsory insurance for automobiles in New York.
Source : select.nytimes.com
Drivers Getting Break as Many Insurers Cut Rates
With gasoline prices at more than $2 a gallon this summer, there is at least one bit of good news for drivers: the cost of auto insurance is starting to fall.
State Farm, the nation’s largest insurer, and two other big auto insurers, USAA and the Farmers Insurance Group, are cutting prices in many states and dozens of other insurers across the country are following their lead, industry experts say.
‘’Millions of drivers are going to see the cost of auto insurance fall this year,'’ said Robert P. Hartwig, the chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute, a trade organization in New York. Rather than announcing across-the-board rate decreases, insurers including giants like Allstate, Progressive and Geico are more aggressively offering lower prices to customers with good driving records and significantly raising prices for those who have been involved in crashes or have received tickets for speeding and other violations. Since most drivers fall into favorably rated categories, the net result is expected to be lower costs for millions of drivers.
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An Escalating Blame Game Ensues Over the High Price of Auto Insurance
With costs soaring for auto insurance companies, New York is moving toward becoming the most expensive state in the country for coverage. But legislation intended to cut one of the biggest expenses – fraudulent claims – has stalled in Albany; adjournment of the state’s Assembly is just weeks away, and the odds are rising against a compromise even as the problem worsens.
Gov. George E. Pataki and other Republicans, Democrats, the top insurance regulator and the insurance companies themselves agree that new laws are needed to plug holes in the state’s no-fault auto insurance system, which requires insurers to pay the first $50,000 in medical bills from injuries in an accident, no matter who is at fault. But the different players accuse one another of blocking a solution.
Some Democrats and consumer advocates say the insurers have not done enough themselves to address fraud, and have merely tried to pass on rising expenses to drivers while bolstering profits.
The Democrats say they see no sign of compromise on the part of either Mr. Pataki or the Republicans in the Legislature. ‘’There’s been no effort by the administration whatsoever to bring the parties together on a legislative reform package,'’ said Alexander B. Pete Grannis, the Manhattan Democrat and chairman of the Assembly Insurance Committee.
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Scanning For Dollars By Middlemen; Medical Brokers Are Cited In Auto Insurance Costs
After another driver rear-ended Jean Fitzgerald Hillier’s pickup truck near Tampa, Fla., last year, she went to a chiropractor complaining of neck and back pain, headaches, dizziness and numbness in her arms. To try to find the cause of Mrs. Hillier’s discomfort, the chiropractor sent her to a medical-imaging center for diagnostic tests.
The center performed two magnetic resonance imaging, or M.R.I., exams and two computerized axial tomography, or CAT, scans and charged a total of $1,516, according to court documents. Later, insurance investigators said, another corporation with the same ownership and address as the chiropractor’s clinic billed Mrs. Hillier’s insurer, the Hartford Financial Services Group, $5,700 for the scans – a 275 percent markup.
The insurance company contends in a lawsuit that the clinic was engaged in a practice called brokering that lets medical middlemen reap thousands of dollars from tests, sometimes fraudulently, by exploiting a weakness in no-fault insurance programs. The clinic owner has denied allegations of wrongdoing in court filings. His lawyer declined to elaborate in an interview, except to say that ‘’my client did nothing wrong.'’
Investigators say brokers are behind a growing number of abusive and often fraudulent charges in the treatment of auto accident victims in Florida. And across the country, fraud and abuse in diagnostic imaging, one of the most expensive and common medical procedures for auto accident victims, is a major reason injury claims in several states are rising at three times the rate of medical costs in general, experts said.
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ASSEMBLY WIDENS AUTO INSURANCE; Votes Protection for Victims of Hit-Run, Stolen-Car and Uninsured Drivers
The Assembly moved today to protect the state’s motorists and pedestrians against the few uninsured drivers still using New York highways.
Source : select.nytimes.com
Proposal Ties Car Insurance To Mileage
Seizing on an issue that dominated last year’s gubernatorial race in New Jersey, Lieut. Gov. Betsy McCaughey Ross released a plan today to lower auto insurance rates in New York, including a proposal for pay-by-the-mile premiums.
It was one of two proposals to lower the rates offered today by candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Peter F. Vallone, Speaker of the New York City Council, offered a more limited proposal, but Ms. McCaughey Ross’s plan would give consumers who do little driving a choice of paying a flat rate, as drivers do now, or paying a rate based on mileage.
Insurance companies already include miles driven as one of many factors in calculating premiums, but her plan would make the correlation much more direct.
‘’The risk isn’t in owning a car, it’s in driving one,'’ Ms. McCaughey Ross said. ‘’People who drive less should not be made to line insurance companies’ pockets.'’
The mileage-based approach would be a boon to people who drive infrequently, a group that includes elderly drivers, residents of New York City and women. All three constituencies could be crucial to the Lieutenant Governor’s political fortunes; older people are more likely to vote, she is appealing explicitly for women’s votes, and she is trying to raise her relatively low standing among New York City voters.
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