When you buy a new car or move to a new state, you ned to know what auto insurance coverage is mandated by the state is absolutely essential. By making PIP, Personal Injury Protection mandatory, Florida gets the no-fault tag for auto insurance.
The Florida no-fault auto insurance system focuses on compensation of medical expenses on personal injury due to auto accident. Your auto insurance company will pay for your medical expenses for your injury irrespective of who is at fault in the accident. The at-fault party will cover the damage done to your vehicle.
‘No Fault Insurance’ is defined as “an auto insurance policy that covers the insured for stated risks whether or not he or she is at fault in an accident”, It is in fact akin to the first party coverage of a policy.
By means of this the policy, the holder is restricted to get a recovery via a civil judicial system for damages caused by third parties, besides being compensated by the policy holder’s insurance company itself. The advantage of a no-fault insurance is that you can bring down the legal costs considerably in the case of accidents by providing immediate compensation for injury caused. through Personal Injury protection (PIP) insurance. The victim’s insurance company pays him for his claim while the company that covers the policy of the person responsible for accident would also pay the claim on vehicle damage and charge the driver at fault a considerably higher premium as he has now become a driver with an accident record.
In the case when both drivers are at fault, this kind of insurance is still advantageous as it quicken the damages and compensation payment processes, by increasing the premium payments. There are an equal number of critics and supporters of the no-fault concept of an insurance policy. Some feel, for instance, that the perpetrators of the accident are let off rather leniently, while others feel accidents are inevitable given the present day scenario and no driver should be stringently or unduly punished.
According to the present no-fault auto insurance rules, the motorists who are the victims of the auto accident may sue for extensive injuries, the suffering and the pain within a specified framework of conditions. It could be a verbal description within a verbal threshold or as a monetary compensation amount in dollars within a monetary threshold. In some states however, there are complaints of the verbal threshold being “eroded” by its legal connotation and instances of dishonest medical practices like inflation of medication and treatment bills.
At present Puerto Rico and twelve states in the US including Florida have verbal thresholds providing a framework for claiming no-fault policies.
In reality Florida’s no-fault law expired on 1st October2007 due to difference of legal opinion as regards the reforms to be implemented in the law. Barely three months later though, in January 2008, certain reforms were included in the existing no-fault law in order to guard against possible attempts at fraud.
One of the reforms is that the personal injury policy (PIP) can be claimed only when authorized by authorized health care providers. Another part of the legislation provides a ceiling limit for the claims made for medical expenditure.
These and other reforms have helped reimburse claims for those who have genuinely in need of the compensation. It has been observed that among those patients who are admitted to hospitals and trauma centers for treatment of injuries caused by auto accidents depend heavily on PIP as they have little or no health insurance. These laws have also effectively brought down the incidence of fraudulent claims.