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Earlier this week Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced that auto insurance refund checks will start to arrive in Michigander’s mail boxes over the coming weeks. The 400 dollar refund checks are coming out of the state’s 5 billion dollar surplus that insurers pay into to help victims of auto accidents pay their medical bills. The surplus of funds in the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association began to add up after the states new auto reform law took effect at the beginning of July last year. The MCCA agreed to the refund checks, but will keep 2 billion dollars in the catastrophic claims fund.
Governor Whitmer announced back in November that each Michigan driver will receive a refund check from auto insurers. The refund checks are a result of Michigan drivers being overcharged on auto insurance premiums over the past couple of years. During the pandemic, even though many were staying off the roads, Michigan drivers continued to pay some of the highest premiums in the country.
Prior to the reform law, many saw Michigan as a premiere state for auto accident victims to find themselves in. When the new auto insurance law took effect, it changed how the schedule for the payments for auto victims bills would be paid. Cutting the payments made by auto insurers in half. Which has caused a number of issues for the disabled community within Michigan, including forcing some patient facilities to close their doors altogether. Auto accident victims, some of whom are permanently disabled, say that while refund checks may help some residents in the near future, they ask at what cost to everyone’s peace of mind when on the road.
