Today is Auto Insurance Awareness Day and it is the day that Ontario drivers lose $1 million in auto insurance coverage.
Ontario’s wealthy insurance companies continue to see high profit levels while drivers, who pay the highest premiums in Canada, continue to see their coverage eroded to the lowest level in 25 years.
“It isn’t just Ontario’s most injured auto accident survivors that are being asked to pay the price for higher insurer profits” says Rhona DesRoches, Chair of FAIR, “the length of time that an injured person can collect from their insurer has a much shorter time frame and this will affect the public supports systems we have in the province.”
Insurers will be reducing the duration limit of medical and rehabilitation benefits from 10 years to 5 years for all claimants (except children) and stripping millions out of coverage.
“For those that are not working, such as students at the time of an accident, the cuts are really going to hurt if you are seriously injured” says DesRoches. “These individuals will now only receive $185.00 a week for 2 years instead of $320 a week over a lifetime if they suffer a complete inability to carry on a normal life. This represents hundreds of thousands of dollars those victims won’t be able to access and these costs will be passed on to the unsuspecting taxpayer.”
Ontario’s social nets and healthcare coverage are already under significant stress with the number of individuals dependent on Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) considerably higher since the last round of auto insurance cuts in 2010.
The Minister of Finance’s recent report on the healthcare costs of treating accident victims revealed that taxpayers are paying the lion’s share of victim’s medical costs with a shortfall in 2013/14 of almost a quarter of a billion dollars that year.
“We have to ask ourselves, do we already have publicly funded auto insurance when the taxpayer is already subsidizing so much of the costs?” asked DesRoches.
The Ontario government recently stripped away the Charter right of victims to access our civil courts to hold their insurer accountable by setting up a new hearings system to handle the tens of thousands of unpaid claims each year. So far this year there has been over 18,000 claims filed by victims who have been denied the benefits they’ve paid for.
