It has become the equivalent of a showdown in the old west with two gunfighters standing in the middle of a dusty street while on-watchers wait for pistols to be drawn and someone killed. The mortician has already built a pine box to serve as a casket and a hole has been dug on boot hill where under six feet of dirt the loser will be marked by a cheap wooden headstone and soon forgotten. Such is the stare-down currently going in the legislature as the House and Senate offer duel proposals to either reform or forget Florida's 30-year-old auto personal protection insurance program.

Since lawmakers some years ago called for PIP to either be reformed or stricken from the law, the looming expiration date of October 1 has served as both a deadline and a dare. At the time, it is one way to legislatively sidestep the issue in favor of tackling the more pressing issues of reforming the medical malpractice and workers' compensation crises. And with the competitive auto insurance price market that is the envy of the state's turbulent homeowners' market, the fight over PIP has never seen the kind of populist uprising that forces the legislature's hand. For all practical purposes, the conflict over PIP is taking place inside the beltway with few consumers understanding or caring about the outcome. What is left is the traditional fight between the big three: insurers, doctors, and attorneys.

Although PIP will technically expire on October 1, it would be wrong to surmise that a mark on a calendar is going to settle the issue. With a special session scheduled this month on the budget, lawmakers are working feverishly to somehow hammer out a compromise to retain the system in some form or another, even if that means kicking the expiration date further down the road. Why? Because the legislature is inherently conservative and I don't mean that in an ideological sense. What I mean is that once lawmakers are willing to make radical changes, events are largely out of their control. And when it comes to regulated industries such as insurance, control is the name of the game.