Letter to the Editor – Miami Herald: Repealing PIP Insurance is a Bad Deal for Floridians and a Costly One Too

In response to “Repealing PIP Insurance is a Bad Deal for Floridians and a Costly One Too”, the authors, both of whom are closely aligned to the insurance industry, claim that our current automobile insurance scheme in Florida is working and that to change it, and add mandatory bodily injury insurance with the repeal of PIP is a bad idea. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Like all insurance acolytes, the authors dutifully blame the “trial lawyers” for seeking change to earn fees.

The current system in Florida of requiring no bodily injury insurance is short sighted and obsolete. Florida is one of the few remaining states in the entire country that still does not require people who drive cars to carry adequate insurance for the damage they cause. Incredibly, you are not required to carry physical injury insurance in Florida in order to register your car. All you need to have is a policy that provides a driver with $10,000 worth of medical bill insuranceand $10,000 worth of property damage insurance for a car accident. An at-fault driver that causes injury or death to another person is not legally required to carry insurance for it. The article in the Miami Herald states that the current personal injury protection benefit system works fine. What the article does not state is that the vast majority of cases in the county court system are lawsuits against automobile insurance companies for not paying Personal Injury Protection Benefits. PIP has become so confusing and fraught with challenges, that there is a subset of attorneys that just specialize in this type of litigation – that’s how complicated PIP is!

Bodily injury insurance as a requirement for every car in the state of Florida will provide protection for damages and injuries caused by careless drivers. Mandatory bodily injury insurance will provide for the payment of medical bills, wage loss and all of the expenses caused by a driver who runs a red light, doesn’t stop at a stop sign or otherwise drives negligently. That is fair, that is common sense, that is the true essence of personal responsibility. Everyone in Florida should be on board with this. It will not increase insurance premiums if everyone has to carry the same kind of insurance. As an injury lawyer in Florida, I hope the day comes when I no longer have to tell an injured accident victim “the personwho caused the accident had no insurance so there is nothing I can do for you”.