From the Editor

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.

Right now both the House and Senate are offering plans that address the same issues while arriving at different results. The Senate bill aims at implementing a strict medical fee schedule and controlling utilization by reserving a certain amount of money just for physicians' services as away to stop PIP clinics and chiropractors from quickly eating up all the coverage. The House is trying to rein in the current system of paying “usual and customary” charges by finding some standard to limit the cost, such as paying no more than doctors and clinics would receive for treating non-accident victims. The House also wants to cap attorneys' fees for small claims, which the Senate has yet to accept. However, in the past, the Senate has been known to sign-off on such proposals with the greatest example of coming within the limits on workers' compensation attorneys' fees.

While those issues are dominating the PIP debate, it has been largely up to CFO Alex Sink to break through the heart of the squabble. Simply put, is the state willing to forgo PIP knowing that many drivers could sustain injuries in an accident without medical coverage, leaving them to pay their own medical bills or wait for prolonged legal action to settle their claims? From the consumers' perspective, that is the only real issue. So who draws first and gets to walk into the saloon for a shot of whiskey, or is quickly placed in that pine box to join the other poor souls on boot hill?