A Senate panel has cleared a bill aimed at cutting down the massive fraud plaguing Florida’s personal injury protection, or PIP, coverage program.
The Senate Committee on Banking and Insurance passed the PIP fraud-fighting bill (SB 1860) by a vote of 9-0 last Thursday.
Sen. Joe Negron’s bill requires more detailed police reports after a wreck and places tighter restrictions on pain clinics. State investigators say many clinic owners have no prior health care experience and some even opened pain clinics because they heard they could make a lot of money.
The bill also requires that health care providers found guilty of fraud will lose their license for five years and will be barred from PIP reimbursements for 10 years after that.
PIP fraud results in higher costs passed on to customers through increased premiums. In some areas, that translates into hundreds of extra dollars per year.
According to Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater’s office, a 40-year-old safe driver in Miami was paying $582 in PIP premiums in 2008. By 2010, the same driver was paying nearly $1,050 for the same coverage — an 80 percent increase.
This week, his office announced the arrest of a Miami-Dade man on a charge of submitting fraudulent PIP claims
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