Repeal-and-replace bill dead in Senate

An auto insurance repeal-and-replace bill barely has a pulse, just days before the Florida Legislature’s 2018 session is scheduled to end.

But can it rise again in the Legislature’s waning days?

Prospects look slim for reviving Sen. Tom Lee’s bid to repeal Florida’s decades-old $10,000 Personal Injury Protection (PIP) coverage requirement and replace it with a requirement that motorists buy liability and medical payments coverage, legislators said after a Senate panel voted 6-1 not to advance the bill on Wednesday.

Reviving the bill before the March 9 end of the session would be a “heavy lift,” Lee said after the vote.

Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, who kept the bill on life support with a procedural motion to “temporarily postpone” it, said she doubts it’s coming back.

“There are several hurdles people could jump through to bring the bill back, but it’s probably impossible,” Flores said by phone after the hearing.

The auto insurance industry, which opposes the repeal bill as a boon to trial attorneys, isn’t dropping its guard just yet.

Wednesday’s vote of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services “was a positive development, but the bill is not dead yet,” said Michael Carlson, president of the Personal Insurance Federation of Florida, which represents several major auto insurers. “We hope that it’s not resurrected. We know that proponents will try [before the session ends] to move it to the Senate floor, however.”

The near-fatal blow to the bill followed a messy debate Wednesday that pitted insurers and their supporters against plaintiffs attorneys and their supporters.

Before this year’s session, the Florida Justice Association, a trade group of plaintiffs attorneys, identified no-fault repeal as one of its top legislative priorities.

The attorneys’ group said the state had a “moral imperative” to repeal the law that requires drivers to buy minimum coverage for their own injuries, in place since 1979, and revert to a traditional system in which at-fault

“There are several hurdles people could jump through to bring the bill back, but it’s probably impossible.” Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami

motorists pay for victims’ damages.

Repeal supporters say the PIP system no longer fulfills its intended goal — to cover emergency medical treatment for crash victims with no regard to who caused a crash.

Florida is one of only two states that do not require drivers to buy liability insurance, but most Florida motorists buy it anyway to protect themselves in case they are sued for medical damages that exceed PIP’s $10,000 cap.

Lee, a Republican from Thonotosassa, pointed out that the $10,000 cap is worth $1,500 in 2018 dollars and would have to be increased to $66,000 to buy the same amount of treatment it bought in 1979. Rather than accept the $10,000 limit, an increasing number of victims sue atfault drivers for liability coverage, but in accordance with the no-fault law, must first establish that their injuries are permanent, he said.

As a result, Florida is essentially operating under an at-fault system now, but one that better serves attorneys and medical providers than auto accident victims, Lee said.

Lee’s bill differs from one that passed the Florida House in January because in addition to requiring liability coverage — starting at $20,000 for injury or death of one person and $40,000 for two or more people — it also would require drivers to buy $5,000 worth of “MedPay” coverage for their own emergency medical costs.

According to a 2016 study, the bare-bones liability coverage required under the House bill would save motorists an average of $81 a year. But state Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier said coverage required by the Senate version would raise costs for drivers who don’t want to buy more than the minimum required by law.

Debate over the merits of the Senate repeal bill on Wednesday was nearly drowned out by conflict over what isn’t in the bill.

Insurers want a repeal bill to restrict plaintiffs’ ability to bring “bad faith” claims they say can be far more lucrative to plaintiffs and their attorneys than the underlying medical claims. Those costs are passed onto consumers and add 13.4 percent to Floridians’ auto insurance costs, said Rick Parker, lobbyist for the Florida Justice Reform Institute.

Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, a Republican from Naples, proposed prohibiting bad-faith suits when the insurer agrees to pay the limit of an insurance customer’s coverage within 45 days of a claim notification.

The Senate panel rejected that proposal before it rejected the original bill.

On Thursday, a spokeswoman for Altmaier said the commissioner doesn’t think repealing the nofault law “in a vacuum” would reduce auto insurance rates.

Erin VanSickle, Altmaier’s deputy chief of staff, said the Office of Insurance Regulation has no position on the bad faith reform issue. But she said Altmaier “stands ready to work with the Legislature, insurance industry and consumer stakeholders to come up with a plan that will ultimately lead to rate decreases and good public policy.”

If more information on bad-faith reform or the PIP system would be helpful to policymakers, “the Office stands ready to assist,” she said.

Asked about the bill’s prospects to re-emerge before the session ends next week, Florida Justice Association spokesman Ryan Banfill said the group is “grateful to Sen. Flores for her smart, last-minute procedural move.

“Thanks to her leadership, there is still a chance for the legislation to move forward. Stay tuned.”