Fatal Crash for Auto Insurance? : Reform bill runs into trial lawyers and is demolished
Brace yourselves. We may be in for another year of gridlock on auto insurance in the Legislature.
Late Tuesday the Senate Judiciary Committee may have killed off the best hope for getting good drivers in California lower insurance rates--no-frills auto coverage costing about $220 a year.
By one vote the committee failed to pass Senate Bill 941. The bill would have used a no-frills policy as the cornerstone of a no-fault insurance system that would have simplified matters in about 80% of the auto accidents that occur in this state every year, while still leaving people seriously injured in auto accidents with their constitutional right to sue for damages.
No doubt this sordid legislative outcome was the result of hard work by the state’s trial lawyers, who called in all their legislative due bills to sink SB 941. They absolutely adore the current messy, litigious system because it’s good for business. And the lawyers back their financial interests up with generous campaign contributions to legislators.
The legislative slaying is particularly bad news for the inner cities of California, where constituents include thousands of poor and working-class drivers, many of them minorities, who are desperate for lower insurance rates. The predicament these drivers face is in fact shared by everyone who obeys the law by driving with proper insurance coverage. That’s because many poor drivers, logically enough, opt not to buy auto insurance when it costs more than food. Because they drive uninsured, and still have occasional accidents, it adds to the uninsured motorist premiums that the rest of us pay.
There’s another auto insurance bill alive in Sacramento, but it is the handiwork of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a longtime ally of the trial lawyers. He claims it includes a low-cost, no-frills policy. But, suspiciously, there is no money figure in Brown’s bill. If and when it gets put in, don’t expect it to be as low as $220. As we warned, brace yourselves--and hang onto your wallets, too.
