Accident Benefit Cuts will Hurt Ontario’s Injured | Ottawa Lawyer
Our personal injury lawyers are very disappointed about these developments. If you or a loved one suffer a car accident after September 2010, your accident benefit insurance company will only have to support you for $50,000 in medical and rehabilitation benefits, unless you are catastrophically injured or subject to the Minor Injury Guidelines (MIG). Current accident victims are entitled to $100,000.
It may sound like a lot –$50,000 — but that money has to last you for 10 years. If you have a serious injury– physical, psychological or both– an average of $5000 per year for all of your physiotherapy, other therapies, prescriptions, assistive devices and other needs is just not going to take you very far unless you have a generous private insurance policy.
This change to the accident benefit regime will mean that many more people will have to sue the “at-fault” driver for their future medical costs beyond the $50,000. There are other ways this reduction will change how accident victims manage their rehab dollars:
* Ontario car accident victims will want to choose occupational therapists and other in-home therapists close to home so that their policy is not depleted by mileage and travel time;
* Ontario car accident victims will want look, whenever possible, for publically funded options for their medical -rehabilitation needs. This is a tough one becase most public options are not available until any available insurance has been depleted;
* Ontario rehabilitation providers may want to develop alternate, less expensive ways of offering services. For example, could some in-home assessments or education sessions be conducted in a group setting or by skype?
*Ontario car accident victims will want to be choosy about what treatments they select and about what treatments are not working. If a particular therapy is not working after a reasonable length of time, the injured person is going to have to give serious consideration to discontinuing in favour of something else.
How do you feel about these changes to Ontario’s car accident insurance regime? How do you feel about the fact that these changes were implemented by Ontario’s provincial government even though they were in many cases CONTRARY to the suggestions made by the Financial Services Commission of Ontario? As advocates for Ontario’s car Accident victims, the lawyers at Auger Hollingsworth are disappointed and worried about how these changes will impact vulnerable people. If you want to discuss the changes, call Brenda Hollingsworth at613 233-4529.
