OUR COMMUNITY
A Humanitarian Crisis
Some Jewish policy makers want to restore full care to victims of catastrophic auto accidents who are suffering under Michigan’s new auto insurance reforms. LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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bad auto accident can change everything in an instant. Metal meets metal, metal meets flesh, flesh meets concrete, and your anticipated future disappears. Before the accident, you had capabilities, competences, plans and hopes that become irrelevant to your new future. From now on, you might need help to get out of bed, get dressed, use the bathroom, eat, drink or even breathe. And a bad auto accident could happen to anyone who gets in a car as driver or passenger, who rides a bicycle or even
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just crosses a street. It could happen to any of us. If you got into one of those terrible accidents in Michigan under the old auto insurance law, though, your insurance would pay for the services you would need. Ever since Oct. 1, 1973, all drivers had to pay for unlimited personal injury protection coverage (PIP) as part of the old no-fault insurance law. One teenager survived an accident that cost her control of her body from the shoulders down. Dr. Owen Perlman, her doctor, describes her life after the accident:
With medical care, attendant care and a home modified to accommodate her disabilities, she completed high school, then college, and then earned her Ph.D. She got an academic Dr. Owen job. She married and had chilPerlman dren. She had the terrible fortune to undergo a catastrophic accident and the good fortune to have this accident under the old no-fault law. In the words of State Sen. Jeremy Moss, “The old law enabled victims not just to live, but to have a life.”
