Posted On: October 5, 2007, 12:55 pm CDT

Posted By: MG

Diana:

I just thought I would chime in here a little bit on your posts. It seems there is quite a bit of complaining on most of the posts in here so far.

To answer your question about medical coverage to cover you as a pedestrian. This is called health insurance. This is the entire idea behind health insurance being to cover you when you get hurt. When I came to Florida I would have never thought to call my auto insurance company if I was hit by a car. I have health insurance for that and I would rather not be charged twice for the same coverage as neither insurance is cheap, especially when you don't use either very much. Florida legislators, in all their infinite wisdom, decided to make auto insurance carriers bare the medical bills for pedestrians when an auto is involved. That is like saying if I am walking home and a UPS truck hits me then I can claim workers comp because the UPS was working at the time. I would really like to see that claim.

From the scenario you have spelled out, if Ohio is not a PIP state as well, Medicare would be the primary health coverage for your treatment. If Ohio is a no fault state then they would be required to afford you coverage as primary. I am sure your attorney would be able to find that out rather easily. If I were you, I would send a copy of the bill(s) to the at fault party's insurance carrier with a copy of the EOB(s) from Medicare and advise they are stating that primary benefits should come from them. They should then send you a letter advising they are not primary and send that back to Medicare. For all of this you will need proof of sending (fax confirmations) and also follow up phone calls and speak to the supervisor. Your attorney should have already done this for you. This should at least put Medicare on notice that they are primary.

Unfortunately, I don't think Florida legislature will be able to fix PIP as it stands today. It will be nearly impossible to curtail the fraud that plagues the system from every front with the staged accidents, crooked doctors, and overabundance of lawyers protecting the system as it stands. The lawmakers have had several opportunities to attempt to correct the system before it has gotten to this point and they have failed in their duties to take action and have time and again put things off. This is the case yet again with the sunset of PIP. It was not their choice to take it away, but a lack of doing their job and either fixing it or putting another solution in place.

My personal opinion is to make PIP an elective coverage, much like stacked uninsured motorists, in that you must sign away your coverage. On top of that the PIP should inherit medicare fee schedules and some of the laws that govern workers comp treatment. I don't hold my breath though.