Original Story: detroitnews.com
Lansing — Mayor Mike Duggan is at odds with his former employer at the Detroit Medical Center in his legislative battle to let Detroiters buy lower-cost auto insurance coverage with limited medical benefits. A Detroit car accident attorney is following this story closely.
Duggan's "D-Insurance" bill gained approval from the Senate Insurance Committee Wednesday with changes that would let other cities with 35 percent uninsured drivers allow insurers to sell plans capped at $250,000 in car injuries. Claims above that cap would be directed to a driver's health insurance.
But the DMC, where Duggan was CEO from 2004-12, opposes the Detroit mayor's bill because it eliminates unlimited catastrophic coverage for drivers who suffer brain and spinal cord injuries, said Conrad Mallett Jr., chief administration officer of the hospital system. A Detroit car accident lawyer represents clients injured in automobile accidents.
"D-Insurance is not going to be the panacea for the people that live in Detroit … that the mayor believes," said Mallett, a Detroiter who worked under Duggan for eight years.
The DMC treats drivers with severe brain, spinal and neurological injuries from car accidents at its Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan.
"We believe that access back to the catastrophic insurance fund is critical," Mallett told The Detroit News. "We are with the mayor on everything but this."
Duggan, who has met with Detroit hospital leaders in the past week, downplayed the impact to the DMC's bottom line and care to patients.
"It has only a marginal impact on the hospitals," Duggan said Wednesday. "The hospitals will still be able to charge their triple Blue Cross rate."
The years-long battle over reforming Michigan's no-fault auto insurance system rests with the level of long-term care insurers should have to cover for treatments and therapies after hospitalization. A Detroit insurance defense lawyer helps insurance carriers analyze and understand all of the legal and business issues involved in processing insurance claims.
Duggan's insurance plan has been introduced as an alternative to making statewide changes to the insurance system, which passed the Senate last month but has stalled in the House after intense lobbying against the bill by hospitals and rehabilitation centers.
"It's a pilot project ... that maybe someday other areas of the state could follow," said Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge.
Duggan, a Democrat, is trying to keep the Republican-controlled Legislature focused on his narrowly tailored legislation, which does not include caps on the amounts hospitals can charge for individual procedures like the bill stalled in the House would do.
"This doesn't have nearly as dramatic of an effect on the hospitals as the earlier bill," Duggan said.
Duggan's bill focuses on lowering Detroit's 60 percent rate of motorists illegally driving on city streets and freeways without insurance.
The Detroit mayor argues his plan, which would be voluntary for drivers, could cut insurance premiums by one-third or $1,000 for the typical car owner in the city.
"We think the great majority of the financial abuses are coming post-hospital," Duggan said. "I don't believe the hospital is where the problem is."
Mallett said he remains convinced that Duggan's plan will really drive down the cost of Detroit's highest-in-the-nation auto insurance rates.
"We'd be glad to be part of the conversation, but for the life of me as someone who lives and works in the city of Detroit I have to say I'm unconvinced," he said.
The committee amended the legislation Wednesday to allow any city with an uninsured rate of at least 35 percent to petition the state insurance commissioner to allow insurers to sell lower-cost plans with less benefits. The original version of Duggan's proposal set the threshold at 50 percent. A Grand Rapids insurance defense lawyer is following this story closely.
The committee voted 5-3 to advance the bill to the Senate floor.
Sen. Bert Johnson, D-Highland Park, said the new threshold should allow his hometown, Hamtramck, Ecorse, River Rouge, Inkster, Pontiac, Benton Harbor, Saginaw and, possibly, Flint to participate.
Sen. Margaret O'Brien, R-Portage, voted for the bill but expressed disappointment that it would be limited to drivers in urban cities with high concentrations of poverty.
"Poverty knows no municipal lines," O'Brien said.
Under the bill, drivers who opt to buy a lower-cost, cut-rate auto insurance plan would surrender any right to make a claim to the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association, a fund all drivers pay into for coverage of life-altering vehicle injuries.
"There's going to be some huge heartburn on the part of medical providers," said Johnson, who supported the bill.
But Johnson argues the DMC and other hospitals will ultimately benefit from having more Detroit drivers with insurance they can afford.
Showing posts with label Mayor Mike Duggan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mayor Mike Duggan. Show all posts
06 November 2014
ON WATER ISSUES, IT’S DETROIT VERSUS THE U.N.
Original Story: detroitnews.com
For the second time in recent months, the United Nations has looked at the fact that thousands of Detroit families are without water and determined that there are better, more humane solutions to the problem than those used by Detroit’s mayor.
A panel, which included two U.N. special rapporteurs, heard testimony on Oct. 19 at a hearing with hundreds in attendance at Wayne County Community College’s Fort Street campus. Having implemented his 10-point plan to deal with water shutoffs, Mayor Mike Duggan rebuffed the U.N. panelists who took testimony from Detroiters.
While the 10-point plan could be a starting point for negotiations (if the mayor were up for negotiating with anyone on this issue) both the plan and his response fail to recognize the reality the people of Detroit are facing.
Detroit is America’s poorest big city, with 38 percent of residents living at or below the poverty line and an unemployment rate of 14.6 percent. The United Way recently released a report that shows two-thirds of Detroiters can’t afford basic needs like transportation, housing and health care, even when people in their households are working full time. When you combine these dire numbers with the leaky pipes and bureaucratic foul-ups of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, you have a recipe for injustice and disaster.
The U.N.’s second condemnation of the massive water shutoffs is part of a chorus of public health advocates and officials that are demanding an alternative to depriving families of water. Those voices include National Nurses United, professor John Powell, co-chairman of the Population Health Council, and Dr. Mouhanad Hammami, county health officer for the Wayne County Department of Public Health. Hammami and Powell wrote an open letter calling the shutoffs a public health hazard and citing a double bind: People in poverty are already more likely to be in poor health. Being deprived of water only increases health risks.
In plain terms, the only humane solution is to create a plan where people at a certain income threshold pay for water based on their income. This would keep the water flowing to families that need it and the revenue flowing to a system that requires it. We would stop squeezing families struggling to make ends meet and instead make sure corporations who clearly have the ability to pay are no longer allowed to let their bills pile up without retribution.
We actually have a plan that was passed by the City Council in 2006. The Water Affordability Plan guarantees water and revenue based on people’s ability to pay. But one thing needed to implement the plan has yet to occur in City Hall — a paradigm shift. Recognizing how utterly crucial access to water is to families and embracing a practical plan to make sure families are never without it takes vision and courage.
It takes courage to acknowledge that you’ve been an accessory to devastating entire neighborhoods, as one North End Detroit resident said at the U.N. hearing. There is no one there to help when blocks of people are without water. Seniors that are housebound, renters who have to wait for landlords to turn the water back on, and children who have no control of family finances are among the hardest hit. But everyone needs water.
It may be hard for Mayor Duggan to hear and see the devastation continue to get international attention, but that’s not nearly as hard as life for thousands of residents who can’t afford the basics. The mayor’s plan needs to take that truth into account and adjust to fit the needs of the people, not the other way around.
Monica Lewis-Patrick is director of outreach for We the People of Detroit. Lila Cabbil is president emeritus of the Rosa Parks Institute. Both are members of the Detroit People’s Water Board.
For the second time in recent months, the United Nations has looked at the fact that thousands of Detroit families are without water and determined that there are better, more humane solutions to the problem than those used by Detroit’s mayor.
A panel, which included two U.N. special rapporteurs, heard testimony on Oct. 19 at a hearing with hundreds in attendance at Wayne County Community College’s Fort Street campus. Having implemented his 10-point plan to deal with water shutoffs, Mayor Mike Duggan rebuffed the U.N. panelists who took testimony from Detroiters.
While the 10-point plan could be a starting point for negotiations (if the mayor were up for negotiating with anyone on this issue) both the plan and his response fail to recognize the reality the people of Detroit are facing.
Detroit is America’s poorest big city, with 38 percent of residents living at or below the poverty line and an unemployment rate of 14.6 percent. The United Way recently released a report that shows two-thirds of Detroiters can’t afford basic needs like transportation, housing and health care, even when people in their households are working full time. When you combine these dire numbers with the leaky pipes and bureaucratic foul-ups of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, you have a recipe for injustice and disaster.
The U.N.’s second condemnation of the massive water shutoffs is part of a chorus of public health advocates and officials that are demanding an alternative to depriving families of water. Those voices include National Nurses United, professor John Powell, co-chairman of the Population Health Council, and Dr. Mouhanad Hammami, county health officer for the Wayne County Department of Public Health. Hammami and Powell wrote an open letter calling the shutoffs a public health hazard and citing a double bind: People in poverty are already more likely to be in poor health. Being deprived of water only increases health risks.
In plain terms, the only humane solution is to create a plan where people at a certain income threshold pay for water based on their income. This would keep the water flowing to families that need it and the revenue flowing to a system that requires it. We would stop squeezing families struggling to make ends meet and instead make sure corporations who clearly have the ability to pay are no longer allowed to let their bills pile up without retribution.
We actually have a plan that was passed by the City Council in 2006. The Water Affordability Plan guarantees water and revenue based on people’s ability to pay. But one thing needed to implement the plan has yet to occur in City Hall — a paradigm shift. Recognizing how utterly crucial access to water is to families and embracing a practical plan to make sure families are never without it takes vision and courage.
It takes courage to acknowledge that you’ve been an accessory to devastating entire neighborhoods, as one North End Detroit resident said at the U.N. hearing. There is no one there to help when blocks of people are without water. Seniors that are housebound, renters who have to wait for landlords to turn the water back on, and children who have no control of family finances are among the hardest hit. But everyone needs water.
It may be hard for Mayor Duggan to hear and see the devastation continue to get international attention, but that’s not nearly as hard as life for thousands of residents who can’t afford the basics. The mayor’s plan needs to take that truth into account and adjust to fit the needs of the people, not the other way around.
Monica Lewis-Patrick is director of outreach for We the People of Detroit. Lila Cabbil is president emeritus of the Rosa Parks Institute. Both are members of the Detroit People’s Water Board.
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