The issue of medical marijuana and how it pertains to insurance has been under debate in Michigan. Lawmakers have previously enacted legislations that freed insurers from paying for medical marijuana, but the same cannot be said for auto insurance companies. It is fairly common for those that have been injured in car accidents to seek medical marijuana as a way to medicate the pain. According to state lawmakers, no insurance coverage was ever meant to accommodate such a treatment and now legislators are looking at new laws that would bar insurance companies from paying such claims.
When legislators were drafting the law that would disallow health insurers from covering medical marijuana claims, they did not expect that the claims would instead be sent to auto insurance companies. Peter Kuhnmuench, executive director of the Insurance Institute of Michigan, says that the law was only written to consider health insurance, which created loopholes in the insurance system that could be exploited. Because of these loopholes, many of the medical marijuana claims that car insurers have received have been paid in full.
Amendments to the law are now on their way to the state Senate, which is likely to vote to prohibit medical marijuana from being covered by insurance of any kind. Legislators will have to pay closer attention to how the law can be interpreted to avoid future problems.
