I read this article in the Syracuse Post Standard the other day about how no-fault insurance regulators plan to start “kicking crooked doctors out of New York’s no-fault program“, referring to such doctors as “linchpins in fake-accident scams that cost insurers and policyholders hundreds of millions of dollars”.
As a Central and Syracuse New York auto accident lawyer, I have represented many, many auto accident victims over the years. And I have some questions for the regulators who are targeting no-fault victims’ doctors. The first is, “what planet do you live on?!”
I have never, in my career, known any auto accident victims’ doctors or other medical professionals to take part in “fake” no-fault claims. Instead, I have known no-fault insurance carriers to hire biased doctors to issue one-sided reports used to justify denying car-accident victims their medical treatment. These doctors butter their bread with a regular stream of income from the no-fault insurance industry, which asks them, time and time again, to give an opinion as to whether their insureds’ no-fault funded medical treatment is “reasonable and necessary”. With surprising (actually, not) regularity, these doctors, bought and paid for by the insurance company, find the insured’s medical treatment NOT necessary or reasonable. The no-fault carriers then use these reports to justify denying payment of any further medical treatment for their insured, who by the way, dutifully paid their no-fault insurance premiums for years.
While I do not deny that there may be a few “crooked doctors” who support cooked-up no-fault claims, they are surely few and far between. But the so-called “independent” medical examiners who are actually in the no-fault insurance industry’s pocket? A dime a dozen.
Why are the regulators targeting “crooked” doctors who support no-fault claims, and not those who oppose no-fault claims for the insurance companies? Could it be that the insurance industry has a bigger lobby in Albany than injured car accident victims?
As usually, money talks.
Keep safe!
Mike Bersani
Email me at: bersani@mbk-law.com I’d love to hear from you!
Michael G. Bersani, Esq.
mbk-law.com
Central NY Personal Injury Lawyer
Michaels Bersani Kalabanka
1-315-253-3293