The wool over our eyes

Nov. 30, 2014

The online magazine, Canadian Underwriter.ca posted a Nov. 24th article wherein the insurer Aviva Canada extols the virtue of the passing of Bill 15 which will come into effect tomorrow. People think this bill will be beneficial to them but it will affect accident victims adversely.  In their article they say the following but you need to read on:

“We are pleased that the Ontario government passed Bill 15 without issue, it is a good first step,” Karin Ots, senior vice president of regulatory and government relations for Aviva Canada said in a statement.

“But to truly affect long-term change for the Ontario auto insurance system, we need to reduce claims costs to be in line with other provinces. The insurer says that for every $1 of premium it earns, $0.65 is paid out in claims costs.
“Claims costs need to come down in order to reduce premiums, especially when 92% of Aviva's policyholders in Ontario do not make a claim,” it said.
In Ontario, accident benefit claims have an average cost of $26,863 compared to $3,628 in Alberta, the insurer also noted, based on 2012 data from the General Insurance Statistical Agency (GISA).

Of those costs, 48% go to non-treatment expenses, such as legal fees and assessments, versus the 52% that go to actually treating of victims, based on Aviva’s own data." But figures quoted below on $ paid by insurers to accident victims  by FAIRAssociation,ca, (Rhona Desroches) are far different than the insurer's figures.

So I put to you, how is it that the insurer is complaining about its costs when it is in the business of collecting premiums to cover individuals when they have a car accident and are injured and 92% of policyholders do not in fact make a claim. 
So if only 8% are making a claim, (chances are  8% of people making claims are not all fraudulent) why did we need legislation to increase insurer's profits? Also, if average claims costs are $26,863 or 48% for non-treatment expenses such as legal fees and assessments, then a whole lot of money is spent by insurers to not pay claimants but to pay their legal representatives and their for hire-medico-experts in order to delay, deny, do surveillance, deny some more, cut off benefits if they were started, deny some more and ignore medical reports by physicians other than IME hires. Moreover, medical and rehabilitation benefits are limited to $3,500 in the minor injuries category, a category which people even with more serious injuries get stuck in unless they fight legally to access the $50,000 they are entitled to under their policies for serious injuries - and then the insurer has the right to deduct their assessment costs up to $2,200 out of this $3,500. One wonders why the insurers are complaining. They seem to have a pretty sweet deal.

Rona Desroches, Chair for FAIR Association of Victims for Accident Insurance Reform points out that "what is most shocking is the fact that any insurer (ie. Aviva) is paying out such substantial sums for defending against claims, 44 million dollars in just 2013 alone. This is just one insurance company paying an average of $7,719.30 in legal defence costs per claim - well above the average amount paid to claimants in 2013. See pg 24 of HCDB report where insurers paid out an average of $4745.00 ($3,934 - $5,557) to injured MVA victims in 2013. The amount paid to victims in the first 6 months of 2014 was a mere $1,790 per claim – meaning that the legal defence costs are now four times as much as the value of what a claimant gets from their insurer. http://www.ibc.ca/en/car_insurance/documents/facts/hcdb%20standard%20report%202014h1%20-%20final.pdf  See pages 58 and 59."

She also adds: "The premium paying public knows nothing of the machine that insurance has become – they all believe that they will be covered if they need it. They will continue to believe this even after the vote on Bill 15 because no one will advise them that on Monday they had certain coverage and on Tuesday the coverage has changed. The public puts its trust in our representatives. Even while coverage is tripped away, people believe that our government is acting in THEIR best interests and not the interest of insurance companies."

Inform yourselves about what you'll be put through if you file after being seriously injured and needing medical and rehabilitation benefits - see "So You Think You're Covered" The Insurance Industry Rip-Off" at www.deniedbenefitclaims.com

Source: http://deniedbenefitclaims.blogspot.ca/2014/11/the-wool-over-our-eyes.html