Sunday, August 31, 2014

There is something rotten in the auto insurance industry in Ontario, yet Wynne and Sousa do nothing but hold their noses

Auto insurance bonanza … Not for car crash victims, but for the insurers’ ​doctors who examine them

BY ALAN SHANOFF, TORONTO SUN

Ed: How long can Kathleen Wynne and Charles Sousa pretend there is nothing wrong with the auto insurance industry in Ontario – with exorbitant and usurious insurance rates and obscene profits (the insurance industry pockets 61-cents of every dollar taken in)? Add to these the legal debts incurred while trying to collect on legitimate claims. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and yet Wynne and Sousa go blithely on pretending there is nothing wrong in the Kingdom of Chaos.

Read on…

ORONTO - The Ontario Health Claims Database, August 2014 Report, was issued earlier this month.
It discloses data for auto insurance health claims expenses for six-month reporting periods, beginning January 1, 2011 and ending June 30, 2014.
It will be interesting to see how the insurance industry explains the inconvenient numbers and statistics disclosed in the Report.
Perhaps the most alarming statistic relates to the number and cost of insurer-initiated medical examinations (IMEs).
These are the so-called independent examinations insurance companies force accident victims to take.
Victims have long complained about the number of examinations they are required to attend as well as the quality of the examinations and examiners.
In 2011, insurers spent $132,950,124 on these IMEs.
They spent $453,923,425 on all health claims expenses, meaning insurers gave their medical experts 29.3 cents out of every dollar they spent on health claims expenses.
They ordered IMEs for 26,957 of 59,080 claimants, almost one out of of every two claimants.
They paid an average of $4,930 per claimant examined to their medical experts.
Yet the total average amount paid per claimant, including payment for treatment, was $7,683.
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To read the whole commentary, go to: http://www.torontosun.com/2014/08/30/auto-insurance-bomnanza


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