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Wednesday, July 21, 2021
By Michael Nichols
Categories: Personal Injury
Why? Because marginal wages for home health care providers just turned into poverty wages and now no one wants to do this job - the job of caring for people who are permanently and seriously injured from a catastrophic accident.
There were many who showed up to work on July 1 to discover their services were now worth $.55 on the dollar. Imagine that: "I’m with the government and I’m here to help… by cutting your pay." That is the unfortunate result of several factors which came together over time to shape Michigan’s amended No-Fault Act. Term limits for legislators has eroded the institutional knowledge that once resided in our deliberative bodies, the House and Senate. That is a big reason why Senate Bill 1 of 2019 was so fatally flawed. We were told it would cut Michigan's Auto Insurance rates by no longer requiring unlimited personal injury benefits. But there was so much more to it - oh so much more.
Now, inexperienced elected officials and staff were overwhelmed by a fierce lobbying campaign, one that was defeated during the Snyder administration in 2012-2013. Then, a skeptical legislature and governor were not inclined to take the insurance lobby’s call for No-Fault reform. The No-Fault Act was sold to Michiganders in the early 1970s as a vehicle to reduce premiums and auto-negligence litigation by creating a system for prompt payment of benefits.
It did the opposite. Premiums soared to tops in the nation and trench warfare ensured in the courts as trial lawyers fought to combat the tide of ‘tort reform’ that arose in the 1980s and 1990s. During the aughts, a series of activist Michigan Supreme Court decisions curtailed the victims’ ability to bring their claims to trial. Those decision were slowly overturned by subsequent Supreme Courts at the time the first No-Fault “reformers” attempted radical change to the law, i.e. McCormick v Carrier et al, 487 Mich 180, 795 NW2d 517 (2010) among others.
In 2019, a less experienced set of lawmakers, succumbed to substantial pressure from lobbyists and special interests, and passed the amendments that took effect last year. The current phase of the law that is about to take effect will cut the pay for medical providers by 45%! In other words, your doctors, nurses, and staff just got a pay cut from the State of Michigan, a move that only benefits the insurance industry. Do you think you will get the same level of service? Is any of this smart or fair? No. On top of that - part of the legislation was a retroactive slashing of payments to these home health care providers. Awful.
What did We The People gain from this latest ‘reform’ that was said would save us so much money? A system that benefits the insurance industry at your expense, and now your doctor’s too.