Washington, D.C. – The Consumer Choice Center today launched its policy primer offering simple reforms to provide for more competitive, reasonable, and accurate insurance rates to increase choice and lower costs for consumers.

The primer, Fixing What’s Broken: Practical Consumer-Friendly Insurance Reforms to Save Money, focuses on two pressing issues for American consumers. First, it analyzes how insurance providers can adapt to the emerging scientific reality of tobacco harm reduction and consumer trends toward less harmful nicotine alternatives to smoking. Second, this primer explains different models for structuring consumer auto insurance and suggests how costly legal battles can be minimized, in turn lowering costs and premiums.

Yaël Ossowski, Deputy Director at the Consumer Choice Center, commented on the auto insurance policy recommendations, saying, “The legal nightmare that comes with every fender bender or more serious auto injury is known to every American, as they’re reminded by the slew of injury lawyer billboards on the interstate. Rather than subjecting every auto incident to a lawyer-led process that inevitably raises premiums, states and insurance firms should give consumers the right to choose whether they would prefer a tort or no-fault insurance model as is practiced in other countries and states.” 

Attempts at legislation to offer “auto choice” to consumers have been introduced in all levels of state and federal government over the years, but have consistently been opposed by well-funded injury lawyers who see a threat to their business.

“For too long, we’ve allowed car insurance costs to balloon because of the adversarial nature of our highly litigious justice system, rather than understanding that most other countries do not force drivers into court after each accident. Giving auto insurance consumers the ability to choose between a no-fault and a tort system would allow flexibility, remove the adversarial declaration of liability that inflates lawsuits, and allows companies to compete for our business with the best policies and plans available. Best of all, good drivers with clean records would benefit from substantially lower premiums and simple plans,” added Ossowski.

Giving consumers the choice between a plan that requires legal negotiations between insurance companies to find blame and assign penalties, and a no-fault model that prioritizes quick and easy payouts without liability is a no-brainer that would bring immediate savings to consumers’ monthly premiums.

“Guided by state insurance commissioners, firms should offer alternatives to liability plans and allow consumers to choose the plan that works best for them as a perfect middle ground between enabling choice and reducing legal costs and headaches,” concluded Ossowski.

The policy primer can be read in full HERE.

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The Consumer Choice Center is an independent, nonpartisan consumer advocacy group championing the benefits of freedom of choice, innovation, and abundance in everyday life for consumers in over 100 countries. We closely monitor regulatory trends in Washington, Brussels, Ottawa, Brasilia, London, and Geneva. Find out more at www.consumerchoicecenter.org

Read this press release online.