I so wish our legislators would REALLY take a look at all the details of the fraud issue before excluding “massage therapy” from PIP.IF SB1860 passes as is, this and other services provided by massage therapists and other providers will not be available through auto insurance as it has been for 27 + years in FL.
The truth is: Massage Therapy as defined in Chapter 480.003, that they want to exclude encompasses not only massage therapy, but other service of massage therapy listed in Chapter 480.003 such as deep tissue, manual hands on therapy which so so many auto accident victims have used to help recover from injuries. These services have always been provided under a written prescription by a treating physician.
Also included in the definition is the coverage elimination of hot/cold/hydrotherapy, ultrasound, electrical stimulation and other mechanical or electrical devices used by physical therapists, chiropractors, massage therapists and often medical doctors.
I urge everyone today to email or contact your local representatives, especially committee members and ask to have the exclusion of MASSAGE THERAPY removed from this bill. Valid auto accident victims should not suffer needlessly because of the sleazy crooked, accident staging people, bill padding physicians and massage therapists, accident report runners, crooked, ill gotten clinic owners and so forth.
The majority of massage therapists who were involved in and being blamed for a part of fraud were because of clinics and other providers exploiting newly licensed, unfamiliar with insurance, often of foreign decent massage therapists. These clinics were “legally” licensed by the AHCA, yet they want more clinics licensed??
FIGHT For our rights or forever lose them!!! Thank YOU!!
Vivian M. Mahoney, LMT of 27 years! Auto accident victim, mother of disabled daughter who is alive today because of these services paid for by auto insurance during her 3 months in intensive care, also a fighter for rights of patients and providers. vivianmadison@aol.com
Pretty funny how rep Boyds bill is a wish list for the insurance companies……Boyd owns an insurance agency and his largest donors are insurance companies……wake up everyone, our politicians sell us out to the highest donors!!
I did not realize that Boyd was in the insurance business and at first glance I don’t like the relationship. However, we do need people educated in the industry to push for the best solutions. But his solution is not the best. The 72 hour limitation can certainly be challenged. Also, the emergency room issue solves nothing. In most cases the ER doctors will do a quick assesment and make a recommendation to follow-up with the family doctor or specialists. Additionally, attorneys want their clients to go the ER in order to begin to “build the case”.
I’m not 100% sure but from what I have read, if you go to the ER within 72 hours, your follow up visits with a PCP will also be covered. Also, What case would the attorney build up? You can only be treated by the ER and your PCP. Those bills will be covered. I like this plan the best. It will eliminate most of the fraud in my opinion.
Why don’t they keep PIP but just lower the limit to $1000 or $2000 for walk-in clinics/family doctors and keep it at $10K for those transported to a hospital by ambulance.
This would still provide the $10k for those with legitimate major injuries and provide enough coverage for someone to go get checked out by a physician after an accident. All while keeping the dollar totals low enough to keep the lawyers out of it.
Just had a PIP claim turned in by a passenger that had their finger caught in the car door. In addition to the fraud, PIP’s become a medical plan for some people. This needs to be addressed as well. Shouldn’t the coverage be for injuries resulting from auto accidents? Of course we then get into the definition of an auto accident.
I treated a physician one time (by written prescription from his treating physician) who had minor head injury, resulting in neck pain and headaches. It happened when he was placing groceries in his automobile trunk and the bag boy accidentally shut the trunk lid on the doctors head. Ya never know how an auto accident can happen or the damage it causes. But both BILLS leave a lot to be desired in eliminating fraud and providing beneficial treatment to patients.
I’m an agent who earns a portion of my income from PIP (commission) and this coverage should be completely eliminated as it is an open check book wrought with fraud, inflated bills and not needed by more than half of the consumers. 1-800-kill-pip (and ask Gary!!). Almost all other states have come to this conclusion too, about time Florida. Charlie is gone, step up.
So you would rather be hit by one of the 40% of drivers in this state that are uninsured and have to fight them in civil court to have your medical claims paid?
Fix the fraud, simple solution. I would say the problem is is with more of the “non-standards” because of the low cost premiums that they offer to often times poor drivers. People with Allstate, State Farm, Progressive, USAA, and all the other big insurances in the state are not the ones staging accidents for the most part. It’s your cut rate, fly by night insurance companies with like 8 different names that are having their claims skyrocket.
The reason for most of the policy hikes with the bigger companies was from law suits due failure to pay on the correct fee schedule for these claims which caused a massive amount of PIP Suits.
If you cant drive safely your license should be revoked. It would work the same for almost anything else you are required to have a license for. Driving is not a right.
And Charlie is now “For the People” he doesnt want PIP to go away
This law is stupid. Eliminate the fraud not the professionals!! Our government is sold to the highest payer, which in this case happen to be the insurance companies who take your money away, and when you need treatment or your car repair they take for ever to respond and in some cases they dont even pay. Wake up people The number one fraud is insurance companies
PIP is a good coverage item for almost any type of consumer; more so, for those who cannot afford the extravagant costs of medical treatment (and this is a topic in and of itself).
I find that a possible solution is in a two-fold approach:
(1) We address the PIP prices forced on to honest consumers that have the means to find suitable care elsewhere. In other words, make PIP a mandatory coverage item that may be removed by written notice (endorsement), just like we have with UM/UIM.
(2) We address the fraud by addressing the largest facilitator of the fraud – namely, the clinics and 1-800-DIAL-A-FRAUD, attorney referral services.
There should be a specific license that allows a clinic to service any PIP related matters. This license should impose a mandatory cap on the business generated at that clinic to no more than a fractional amount of their revenue (e.g. 20-25%). The costs associated with inspections and the processes needed for compliance will be paid for by the businesses that wish to apply.
Essentially, we do two things: (a) no clinic can open up “just” to provide PIP services; and (b) it doesn’t cost us much to implement the new measure since most of the brunt of starting this up is funded by the very people that want to partake in that business.
Attorneys can only be allowed to provide their services on a state-imposed fee schedule and the contingency risk multiplier needs to go.
Does this eliminate fraud? Absolutely not. But, guess what? Nothing that we enact will either (not without causing excessive collateral damage throughout the entire industry, even to the degree of negatively impacting most – if not all – consumers).
What I suggest prevents fraud by removing, for the most part, the incentive. I think that it will do so considerably. Also any costs associated with the enforcement of these changes must be marginal with respect to (a) what we’ve already lost and (b) what we stand to lose by continuing to bicker about massage therapists or ERs or Boyd’s resume.
The House Bill will be a consumers and economic disaster for the entire state of Florida. Apparently to big Insurance shills in the House are only concerned with appeasing their masters on the backs of Florida citizens and small businesses. We all want to stop the fraud but these people are content with throwing the baby out with the bath water for their own selfish reasons. They need to know that they continue to press this anti consumer and small business House Bill it will be political suicide. The Senate bill, minus any anti consumer ammendments is more reasonable and fair
WOW how many times of the years have I head about PIP reform it FL?
I so wish our legislators would REALLY take a look at all the details of the fraud issue before excluding “massage therapy” from PIP.IF SB1860 passes as is, this and other services provided by massage therapists and other providers will not be available through auto insurance as it has been for 27 + years in FL.
The truth is: Massage Therapy as defined in Chapter 480.003, that they want to exclude encompasses not only massage therapy, but other service of massage therapy listed in Chapter 480.003 such as deep tissue, manual hands on therapy which so so many auto accident victims have used to help recover from injuries. These services have always been provided under a written prescription by a treating physician.
Also included in the definition is the coverage elimination of hot/cold/hydrotherapy, ultrasound, electrical stimulation and other mechanical or electrical devices used by physical therapists, chiropractors, massage therapists and often medical doctors.
I urge everyone today to email or contact your local representatives, especially committee members and ask to have the exclusion of MASSAGE THERAPY removed from this bill. Valid auto accident victims should not suffer needlessly because of the sleazy crooked, accident staging people, bill padding physicians and massage therapists, accident report runners, crooked, ill gotten clinic owners and so forth.
The majority of massage therapists who were involved in and being blamed for a part of fraud were because of clinics and other providers exploiting newly licensed, unfamiliar with insurance, often of foreign decent massage therapists. These clinics were “legally” licensed by the AHCA, yet they want more clinics licensed??
FIGHT For our rights or forever lose them!!! Thank YOU!!
Vivian M. Mahoney, LMT of 27 years! Auto accident victim, mother of disabled daughter who is alive today because of these services paid for by auto insurance during her 3 months in intensive care, also a fighter for rights of patients and providers.
vivianmadison@aol.com
Yea, I thought most of the problems have been caused by people of “foreign decent”.
Pretty funny how rep Boyds bill is a wish list for the insurance companies……Boyd owns an insurance agency and his largest donors are insurance companies……wake up everyone, our politicians sell us out to the highest donors!!
I did not realize that Boyd was in the insurance business and at first glance I don’t like the relationship. However, we do need people educated in the industry to push for the best solutions. But his solution is not the best. The 72 hour limitation can certainly be challenged. Also, the emergency room issue solves nothing. In most cases the ER doctors will do a quick assesment and make a recommendation to follow-up with the family doctor or specialists. Additionally, attorneys want their clients to go the ER in order to begin to “build the case”.
I’m not 100% sure but from what I have read, if you go to the ER within 72 hours, your follow up visits with a PCP will also be covered. Also, What case would the attorney build up? You can only be treated by the ER and your PCP. Those bills will be covered. I like this plan the best. It will eliminate most of the fraud in my opinion.
Why don’t they keep PIP but just lower the limit to $1000 or $2000 for walk-in clinics/family doctors and keep it at $10K for those transported to a hospital by ambulance.
This would still provide the $10k for those with legitimate major injuries and provide enough coverage for someone to go get checked out by a physician after an accident. All while keeping the dollar totals low enough to keep the lawyers out of it.
Just had a PIP claim turned in by a passenger that had their finger caught in the car door. In addition to the fraud, PIP’s become a medical plan for some people. This needs to be addressed as well. Shouldn’t the coverage be for injuries resulting from auto accidents? Of course we then get into the definition of an auto accident.
I treated a physician one time (by written prescription from his treating physician) who had minor head injury, resulting in neck pain and headaches. It happened when he was placing groceries in his automobile trunk and the bag boy accidentally shut the trunk lid on the doctors head. Ya never know how an auto accident can happen or the damage it causes. But both BILLS leave a lot to be desired in eliminating fraud and providing beneficial treatment to patients.
I’m an agent who earns a portion of my income from PIP (commission) and this coverage should be completely eliminated as it is an open check book wrought with fraud, inflated bills and not needed by more than half of the consumers. 1-800-kill-pip (and ask Gary!!). Almost all other states have come to this conclusion too, about time Florida. Charlie is gone, step up.
I’d ‘like’ this a million times if I could.
Really?
So you would rather be hit by one of the 40% of drivers in this state that are uninsured and have to fight them in civil court to have your medical claims paid?
Fix the fraud, simple solution. I would say the problem is is with more of the “non-standards” because of the low cost premiums that they offer to often times poor drivers. People with Allstate, State Farm, Progressive, USAA, and all the other big insurances in the state are not the ones staging accidents for the most part. It’s your cut rate, fly by night insurance companies with like 8 different names that are having their claims skyrocket.
The reason for most of the policy hikes with the bigger companies was from law suits due failure to pay on the correct fee schedule for these claims which caused a massive amount of PIP Suits.
If you cant drive safely your license should be revoked. It would work the same for almost anything else you are required to have a license for. Driving is not a right.
And Charlie is now “For the People” he doesnt want PIP to go away
This law is stupid. Eliminate the fraud not the professionals!! Our government is sold to the highest payer, which in this case happen to be the insurance companies who take your money away, and when you need treatment or your car repair they take for ever to respond and in some cases they dont even pay. Wake up people The number one fraud is insurance companies
PIP is a good coverage item for almost any type of consumer; more so, for those who cannot afford the extravagant costs of medical treatment (and this is a topic in and of itself).
I find that a possible solution is in a two-fold approach:
(1) We address the PIP prices forced on to honest consumers that have the means to find suitable care elsewhere. In other words, make PIP a mandatory coverage item that may be removed by written notice (endorsement), just like we have with UM/UIM.
(2) We address the fraud by addressing the largest facilitator of the fraud – namely, the clinics and 1-800-DIAL-A-FRAUD, attorney referral services.
There should be a specific license that allows a clinic to service any PIP related matters. This license should impose a mandatory cap on the business generated at that clinic to no more than a fractional amount of their revenue (e.g. 20-25%). The costs associated with inspections and the processes needed for compliance will be paid for by the businesses that wish to apply.
Essentially, we do two things: (a) no clinic can open up “just” to provide PIP services; and (b) it doesn’t cost us much to implement the new measure since most of the brunt of starting this up is funded by the very people that want to partake in that business.
Attorneys can only be allowed to provide their services on a state-imposed fee schedule and the contingency risk multiplier needs to go.
Does this eliminate fraud? Absolutely not. But, guess what? Nothing that we enact will either (not without causing excessive collateral damage throughout the entire industry, even to the degree of negatively impacting most – if not all – consumers).
What I suggest prevents fraud by removing, for the most part, the incentive. I think that it will do so considerably. Also any costs associated with the enforcement of these changes must be marginal with respect to (a) what we’ve already lost and (b) what we stand to lose by continuing to bicker about massage therapists or ERs or Boyd’s resume.
The House Bill will be a consumers and economic disaster for the entire state of Florida. Apparently to big Insurance shills in the House are only concerned with appeasing their masters on the backs of Florida citizens and small businesses. We all want to stop the fraud but these people are content with throwing the baby out with the bath water for their own selfish reasons. They need to know that they continue to press this anti consumer and small business House Bill it will be political suicide. The Senate bill, minus any anti consumer ammendments is more reasonable and fair