The Oregon Legislature is considering House Bill (HB) 2821. This bill changes the way auto insurance works in Oregon in a couple different ways to protect the consumer who buys the insurance rather than the insurance company.
This bill deals with PIP (personal injury protection) which pays for your medical bills after an auto collision regardless of who is at fault. If the other driver caused the collision, your insurance company will usually be reimbursed by the bad driver’s insurance company. That should only happen when there is enough insurance money to go around—otherwise the injured person should have priority over an insurance company! That’s why we buy insurance—to protect us from loss, not the company! This bill will change that priority to give the injured person primacy over their insurance company when it comes to payment from a bad driver’s insurance.
The bill also seeks to extend the time period for payment of PIP benefits from one year to two years. Frequently one year of treatment simply is not enough after a car accident. Everyone’s body is different and takes different times to heal. That healing process can take a very long time and creating an artificial limit year-long on medical treatment harms the most fragile and easily hurt among us (think your grandmother recovering from a car accident—it takes longer for her back to heal than a 21 year old Marine). While no limit would be best, a two year limit is better than one.
Overall, this bill will bring great benefits to the consumers in Oregon by putting their interests first, before the insurance company’s, and by at least extending the deadline for people to obtain medical treatment covered by their insurance after a collision to a more reasonable two years.
We do not have time to write about every bill the legislature considers that impacts our clients, but this one is so fundamental and would help so many people that we needed to address it.
Support this bill by contacting your state representative (find their contact information here) and telling them: I’m a consumer and a constituent, and I urge Rep. ___ to support HB 2821. We all pay good money for our auto insurance coverage and we should get what we pay for!
