Hochul details plans to crack down on auto insurance fraud

(The Center Square) — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is pledging to crack down on auto insurance fraud, including "runaway litigation" and staged accidents, that state officials say drive up rates for drivers.

On Thursday, Hochul detailed her plans to beef up state regulations, ramp up investigations of alleged insurance fraud, and target physicians who provide bogus diagnoses for victims of staged crashes, who are often part of organized fraud rings.

"These common-sense proposals will not only increase auto insurance transparency for New Yorkers, but they will also put money back into people’s pockets, especially during a time when the cost of living is just too high," Hochul said in remarks.

Hochul's plan, which she first highlighted in her state of the state address Tuesday, calls for reviving the state’s Motor Vehicle Theft and Insurance Fraud Prevention Board and empowering it to investigate and prosecute insurance fraud, and working with district attorneys "to help build cases that put an end to the organized fraud that’s robbing New Yorkers via elevated insurance rates."

The governor also said she plans to take action against New York drivers who illegally register their vehicles in other states, which she said artificially decreases their coverage and raises costs for law-abiding New York drivers.

She also plans to file legislation to allow prosecutors to seek criminal penalties against individuals responsible for organizing a staged accident, "not just the individual behind the wheel." That includes physicians and other health care workers who sign off on phony medical reports that result in enormous payouts.

Hochul's proposals are facing early pushbacks from trial lawyers who've panned her plan as a 'victim tax' that would let insurance carriers off the hook and shift more costs to the state's taxpayers.

But Tom Stebbins, executive director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, praised Hochul for taking steps toward "fixing New York’s civil justice system and ensuring our liability laws are not exploited by bad actors."

"By tackling rampant fraud and reining in the perverse incentives built into New York's existing laws, her proposals will help make insurance more affordable and our roads safer," he said in a statement. "They'll also ensure the sophisticated actors who orchestrate these schemes are brought to justice and not merely the vulnerable people drawn into them."

Stebbins said the auto insurance fraud often involves "sophisticated" crime rings that "recruit immigrants and those facing homelessness as the drivers that cause these staged crashes."

"Unnecessary medical procedures and surgeries meant to increase the value of the claim follow," he said. "Fraud and lawsuit abuse are not victimless crimes."

New Yorkers pay some of the highest car insurance rates in the nation — totaling just over $4,000 annually on average, nearly $1,500 above the national average, according to state and federal data.

Government watchdogs and industry groups say insurance rates are driven up by a combination of fraud, litigation, legal loopholes, and enforcement gaps, with staged crashes and associated insurance fraud, inflating premiums by as much as $300 per year on average.

In 2023, there were 1,729 staged crashes in New York, which ranks second highest in the nation for incidents of staged fraud, according to the latest data from the New York State Department of Financial Services. Insurance carriers reported 38,270 incidents of suspected motor vehicle insurance fraud during that year, the agency said.