LANSING, MI – Maureen Howell had a career as a trauma nurse; her husband, Jim, is a Saginaw attorney, a Republican who served six years in the Michigan legislature, where he fought to protect the no-fault auto insurance system Michigan had for decades.
They are not the sort of people you would expect to be victimized by the health and political systems they understood far better than most of us do, but they were.
“Our son Sam was brilliant. He was still in high school but was taking accelerated science courses at Michigan State and had been invited to do research at Harvard,” he said. But on Valentine’s Day, 2005, his car went off the road and hit a tree.
Her son was in a coma for three months, and in rehab for seven more. His skull and lungs had been crushed; his spine broken. Doctors had very little hope. But Michigan then had a system that completely covered the needs of victims of catastrophic car insurance.
Today, while his life will always be affected by the accident, Sam can walk, even dance, and managed to get a college degree.
But had this accident happened in 2019 or later, his mom is relatively sure he would be dead. That’s because of “reforms” made that severely limited benefits, reforms that, as I noted in last week’s column, have played havoc with the lives of thousands of auto crash victims. The pay their caregivers received was cut 45 percent, causing most to quit and the agencies that supplied them to go out of business. Last month the Michigan Supreme Court said full benefits had to be restored for those injured prior to 2019.
Those injured later, however, are out of luck. The changes in the law led Ms. Howell and the relatives of other auto accident survivors to start a pressure group called We Can’t Wait (wecantwaitmi.org) aimed at fixing the problem.
The bill that ended full catastrophic coverage had other downsides for many consumers. Drivers now can be sued for unreimbursed medical expenses by someone they injured in a crash. Those who don’t have any auto insurance, such as pedestrians and children, are now limited to only $250,000 in medical coverage.
The insurance lobby had been pressing for changes to the no-fault system for decades, and was supported by the Republicans who long controlled both houses of the Michigan legislature. But many were shocked in 2019 when newly elected Gov. Gretchen Whitmer went along with their plans and signed a bill that did just that.
Ms. Howell said she felt betrayed. “For years, (she) said she was a strong defender of auto crash victims and would stand up for the less fortunate,” she wrote in an angry column published in the online magazine Bridge in 2021.
“But in 2019, she broke her campaign promise and sold our families down the river. All for a cheap political win.” There were those who noted that the governor’s father had been head of the huge insurer Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and wondered if that was why.
Dr. Owen Perlman, who has spent more than 40 years treating brain and spinal cord injuries and who directs a number of medical centers, blames insurance company greed. “For years, the industry standard was that 70 percent of the money they took in went for claims; 25 percent for overhead and five percent for profits.”
But starting in 1992, he said, consultants began showing the insurers how to maximize their profits, to the point where at least one company was paying less than 50 percent in claims.
Lora Rosenbaum, the CEO of a small medical services company said she too was shocked that Governor Whitmer signed the law. “But I was so naïve. I thought –the lawmakers are never going to let people die. They aren’t going to apply this retroactively, but they did.”
“We have different programs within our clinic. One is a Supported Independent Living Program, and everyone in that program is an auto crash survivor.” Dealing with the insurance companies to get paid is a nightmare, she confided.
She was reluctant to talk about that, and said frankly she had fears of retribution — but has concluded someone has to speak out on behalf of the patients. “People can be with the same insurance company, and they are paying on one and not the other,” for no apparent reason. Eventually, “it became clear that the insurance companies just don’t care, and they don’t care because there aren’t any consequences. They are playing the long game.
Looking exasperated, Ms. Rosenbaum added, “I don’t understand why denying people care or raising people’s rates are the only options.” To preserve her sanity, she concluded that her focus had to be “on maintaining our participants that are in our program, working for advocacy groups to fight for legislative change.
“If they won’t change it, they should just repeal it,” she said. Maureen Howell, who has more experience in politics doesn’t think outright repeal of the 2019 law is possible — but she does believe it can be greatly improved. Democrats now have a majority in both houses of the legislature for the first time in decades.
Various possible bills have been drafted, but, she said, “We need an angel,” someone in the legislature powerful enough to champion such a bill, introduce it and muscle it through.
That person has not yet been found, though thousands of auto accident victims are still waiting.
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(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
