Insurers resisting efforts to raise auto liability minimums: Officials fear more increased cost would prompt drivers to go without coverage. [Dayton Daily News, Ohio]

July 25--One of the first causes Jon Husted took up when he joined the Ohio General Assembly in 2001 was a bill to raise the state's minimum requirements for auto liability insurance.

"I think one of the lines in my speech was, 'The last time these were updated was around the time I was born,' " said the now-state senator and Republican candidate for Ohio secretary of state.

Husted's bill, like many since, never made it out of the legislature.

The latest attempt, House Bill 23, was introduced in February 2009 by state Rep. Gerald Stebelton, R-Lancaster, but it's yet to get a hearing in the House Insurance Committee. The bill would double all the minimums.

"My understanding is the chairman of this committee doesn't want this bill to come out," Stebelton said. "I think if this ever got to the floor of the House for a vote, it would pass."

Calls and e-mails to House Insurance Committee Chairman Rep. Dan Dodd, D-Hebron, were not returned last week.

Stebelton, a trial lawyer, said it's past time to raise the mandatory minimums.

"As you think about it, the minimum (bodily injury) limits of $12,500 per injury and $25,000 per accident are pretty minimal," he said. "In an accident today, you can spend $12,500 just in one visit to the emergency room."

What often happens in an accident with a minimum-insured driver, Stebelton said, is a victim ends up making a claim against his or her own policy for under-insured drivers.

"So basically, those of us who have higher limits on our policy are actually paying for this," he said, "because that translates into higher premiums on the under-insured policy."

State Rep. Terry Blair, R-Washington Twp., said he signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill because it would "protect people on the road."

"It does two things," Blair said. "If I'm the driver and I'm carrying the insurance, then it protects my assets, because it doesn't take much to go through $12,500 on bodily injury or $7,500 on property damage. That's almost nothing.

"But it also protects the other people involved through no fault of their own."

Of all the bills proposed in the legislature, he said, this one shouldn't be controversial.

"We require financial responsibility for the privilege of driving a car," Blair said, "so we ought to make it a reasonable amount of money."

But the auto insurance industry doesn't agree.

Mary Bonelli, spokeswoman for the Ohio Insurance Institute, a trade group for insurance companies, said raising state minimums would just drive up the number of uninsured drivers on the road.

"This is something we're working very hard to curtail," Bonelli said. "And having the limits raised at this point would likely effect our numbers in a negative way."

Dean Fadel, chief lobbyist for the trade group, argued there is no need to raise the limits because the "overwhelming majority" of Ohio drivers buy insurance with coverage above the minimums.

The people most affected, he said, would be young people. Drivers between 16 and 25, he said, account for a third of all uninsured drivers involved in accidents, and more than a quarter of all accidents on the roads.

"It's the simple rule of the haves vs. the have-nots," Fadel said. "We've all been there when we could fit everything we owned in our car. These folks are living paycheck to paycheck. That's the population you are going to be impacting the most."

Ohio, he pointed out, also continues to have some of the lowest average car insurance premiums in the nation.

The average auto insurance spending was $628 in 2007, 11th-lowest in the nation, according to a National Association of Insurance Commissioners study released last year. The national average was $795, the study found.

Requiring higher minimums, Fadel said, could drive those premiums up.

But the head of the trade group for Ohio independent insurance agents said the cost of doubling the minimums would amount to a very small premium increase.

Scott Nein, CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents of Ohio, said research his organization did last year found that increases would amount to a few dollars a month even for young drivers who have the highest premiums.

A single male driver in his early 20s with one speeding ticket, for example, would see an annual increase of $68 a year for the increased minimum coverage called for in HB 23. The annual cost for such a driver would increase by 17 percent, from $458 to $536 annually, or less than $6 a month.

Nein of Middletown, a former state senator for Butler and Preble counties, described himself as a "true conservative" who was against the state's mandatory seat belt laws because he sees them as a government intrusion. But he said the state's minimums are "just so woefully low" that they need to be changed.

"If you're involved in an accident, you've got to take care of another person's damages," Nein said. "And if you can't do that, they can take you on personally in a legal action, and your insurance company isn't going to protect you.

"Normally, insurance is a lot cheaper to buy than having to go through that whole process."

All these years later, Husted said he still supports raising the minimums.

"I think the time has come for us to update this," Husted said. "However, we might want to wait until we're in a little bit more of an economic recovery."

Stebelton acknowledges that the outlook for this year isn't good.

But, he vowed, that won't be the end of it.

"If we don't move it this year, it'll be back next year," he said. "As long as I'm a member of the General Assembly, I will be introducing this bill, because I think it's important."

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2393 or [email protected].

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