This legislative session, our state legislators finally took serious aim at one of the clearest examples of lawsuit abuse and fraud. It related to the accurate disclosure of medical bills in lawsuits.
Some plaintiff attorneys were distorting medical costs in lawsuits to inflate settlements and pad their wallets. The impact to consumers has been dramatic as all insurance policyholders have been hit hard with rising premium costs.
The way it worked is that our courts were only given the inflated “billed” costs to calculate damages and not what was actually “paid.” The hefty bill one sees before negotiations bring the price down. Plaintiff attorneys knew that if they could inflate the medical damages bill, they could inflate the settlement.
Hopefully, all of this is behind us now. We need to thank our state elected leaders for doing their job. The price of medical and property insurance should now begin to stabilize, and in the next few years even come down.
Thomas Stelzer
Gulf Breeze, FL
