The Coalition Protecting Auto No Fault (CPAN), a Lansing-based group, has filed a lawsuit against the insurance system in Michigan at the Ingham County Circuit Court, with the intention of forcing the insurance industry to report the data it collects regarding health and accidents.
Officials with the Coalition are working to alter the current insurance system through a proposal of two bills which was made in November and which has been supported by insurance companies. They are seeking to have information from the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association (MCCA) – a Legislature-created nonprofit group that has been in existence for over thirty years – released to the public.
The association functions to help fund lifetime payments by collecting annual assessment data from policyholders with car insurance, at a cost to Michigan drivers of $145 per vehicle as per December 2011.
As motorists must pay this fee, the officials from CPAN say that the information that the MCCA collects should be open to the public. The Freedom of Information Act request was filed by the group near the end of November with the intention of making data available regarding the cost and durations of payments for health.
According to Gloria Freeland, the executive director of the MCAA, in a response to that filing, “The MCAA is a private, nonprofit association. It is not subject to FOIA.”
However, officials from CPAN disagreed with this statement, saying that the accident and benefit data is required to be released by law as a part of the fair debate over the direction to be taken by Michigan’s no-fault insurance system.
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