🚀 go-pugleaf

In <pbngarrett-2202961125570001@l68.ip.quake.net> pbngarrett@aol.com
(Sean Garrett) writes: 
>
>Something like 25% of California motorists are uninsured.  Studies by
the
>Rand Corp. estimate that they cause up to 40% of the "at-fault"
accidents
>in California.
>
>The cheapest plan under no-fault ($50,000 of coverage), the Rand Corp
>estimates, will cost nearly 70% less than the cheapest plans now. 
Thus,
>more people will obey the law, and get insured.
>
>You have to ask yourself if this makes sense.  In the present system,
>lawyers pocket $2.5 billion every year.  Another $3 billion of our
>insurance premiums go to pay for lawyer-induced fraud.  Moreover,
drivers
>who buy insurance end up paying more than $1 billion for uninsured
>motorists who sue them when they get in an accident.  If you take
these
>costs out, your premium will cost less.  That�s something voters made
sure
>of when they voted Proposition 103 into law in 1988.


I was in the Coast Guard in 1976 in New England. Massachusets had a No
Fault insurance law. It was written almost exactly like this one.
Here's how it worked and how this one probably will.

 If you didn't have insurance you didn't get registration. If you got
insurance, got your car registered, then cancelled your insurance, the
insurance companies would contact DMV and they would suspend your
registration. If stopped with suspended registration the police would
seize your vehicle. These provisions are written into the proposed
California law and police have already seized a few unregistered
vehicles as test cases. 

Here's the good part. No fault, was your fault. No matter what
happened, even if someone backed into your car in a parking lot,
You contacted your Insurance company who paid claims. If you filed a
claim in Massachusetts you could pretty well figure on your premiums
(already the highest in the nation at the time) tripling. If you filed
more than one claim in a three year period, you would be cancelled. If
you were cancelled by a company, no one else would write you a policy.
The Insurance industry could effectively suspend your right to drive,
even to and from work, if you filed claims against them. Because of
forced compliance, there was no incentive to lower rates. The insurance
companies simply engaged in profit taking. Insurance execs aren't
Mother Theresa types. 

Conspiring to refuse insurance to people who filed claims had no
financial impact on the Insurance industry. With forced compliance,
they had many more clients than before. Consequently the people of
Massachusetts paid the highest insurance premiums in the nation, while
driving around with dents in their cars, afraid to file valid claims.
The insurance companies simply collected the highest rates and if
someone filed a claim, got their right to drive suspended. 

This is not fiction or hypothesis I was there and SAW it. Massachusetts
voters recalled the no fault initiative. Read Prop 200 it can easily
work this way here.