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| No-Fault Auto Insurance |  Although liability insurance is the first thing you have to think about when you did damage to other people or their property, sometimes it’s not always apparent to those who matter that you are, indeed, the one to blame. It is usually difficult to determine who actually caused the accident in question. This kind of dispute can involve both you and the other driver in a seemingly endless Twilight Zone of costly legal maneuverings. Nothing is being done for the victim, while all that is going on.
This is where, ideally, no-fault insurance can come. If an accident victim’s own insurance company is taking care of their medical expenses despite who caused the failure, it eliminates the expense and mind-numbing delays caused by legal actions, the poor person who got crunched can get medical treatment, and the biblical king and fortuneteller can be fired.
According to the Insurance Information Institute, 12 states and Puerto Rico have put no-fault insurance into effect as law, and some have “add-on” plans designed to increase your adventures without getting in the way of your right to go after some blankety-blank with a liability claim who’s injured you or damaged your property.
There are several things no-fault laws have in common:
1. The insurer pays you and anyone else covered by your policy for lost wages, medical expenses, the fee for hiring others to do household work, yard work, and other chars around the old homestead, and even funeral expense up to certain limits.
2. No-fault insurance does not cover property damage, but cover other portions of a good policy from a reputable insurer.
3. You will be not compensated for any pain and suffering. You have to sue to get paid for that, unless you have one of “add-on” policies.
4. You can’t usually sue other expenses until they covered by the no-fault insurance go past a certain amount, even though you feel they royally deserve it. You are lawsuit-exempt too until their expenses exceed that same limit.
Some states obliged drivers to buy plain old traditional liability insurance in order to protect themselves against those unpleasant old annoying fault-based lawsuits that are permitted within certain states’ no-fault rules and regulations. However liability payments can be reduced by the payments received under the no-fault conditions.
No-fault policies that have add-ons added on include advantages less generous but similar to the purely no-fault programs, and with these add-ons, the victim in a wreck maintains that precious, God-given right to sue for pain and suffering.
No-fault laws are different in various states. Monetary thresholds range from $1,000 in Kentucky to $4,000 in Minnesota. The medical advantages limit in Utah is only $3,000 while in Michigan, there is no medical benefit limitation. But it does not mean you should become a doctor, move to Michigan, get involved in a no-fault insurance scheme, and get rich off that state’s unlimited medical advantages compensation. The temptation to cheat is strong, though, as fraud investigators are finding out with an amazing number of dishonest medical and other shady professional providers coming under examination. Unlawful medical treatment, all kinds of increased expenditures, and the padding of other claim-related expenses in fraudulent personal injury protection (PIP) claims are rocketing premiums higher than the space shuttle in many no-fault states. This criminal phenomenon is getting to be so widespread, it’s actually threatening the continued existence of no-fault insurance coverage. These kinds of abuse and system-cheating shenanigans prompted one state, New Jersey, to take violent steps to stop these swindlers, and other states are looking hard at New Jersey’s latest protocol to form their own no-fault law revisions. With enough review, revisions, and crackdowns on the crooks, no-fault insurance may be here to stay.
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No-Fault Auto Insurance