Government Moving on Marshall Report!

Somewhat buried in the November 14th Fall Economic statement from the Minister of Finance was the news that within the next few weeks the government will announce new measures aimed at “transforming important aspects of auto insurance to create a more efficient system focused on timely care for victims and sustained savings for consumers”.

This statement follows a reference  to the Marshall Report and cites key recommendations (below):

• Improving how the common injuries are treated and managed, so that accident victims receive more timely care and further impairments do not develop due to delayed treatment;

• Establishing a system of single neutral medical assessments to provide patients with the best care options;

• Implementing lifetime management of care for catastrophically injured individuals;

• Creating a strong, independent auto insurance regulator that is more proactive and empowered to address flaws in the system; and

• Reviewing the auto insurance rate regulation framework to enable more innovation and competition that would give a greater number of options to consumers.

Translation? It’s all guesswork but… it is looks like we will see the CTI, or a reasonable facsimile put into place, that there’s a high likelihood of a WSIB-like hospital-

based IEC system with little dispute or wiggle room on findings, potentially a change in cash settlement practices for catastrophic injuries, more regulatory muscle for FSRA (the new regulator), and greater flexibility and responsiveness to insurer rate increase requests to enable increased options for consumer. (This last rationale is for those who think Santa is real).

I’m afraid that little to none of this is good news for our members – and I’m sorry. But we will do our utmost to stay engaged and keep you informed of developments. In addition to reading the between-the-lines-tea-leaves of the statement, we are meeting this week with the Finance Minister’s lead hand on this file to see what more we can learn and to look for opportunities to influence the shape of things to come. I will also be reaching out to other associations so that we might combine our efforts where our interests align.

As always, we’ll keep you posted.