What came first: insurance fraud or Ontario auto insurance reforms?

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Whether they know it or not, Ontario drivers are suffering due to fraud. According to a recent RBC Insurance roundtable, fraud costs represent about $1.3 billion of $9 billion in premiums.

It’s not always cases of odometer rollback and VIN swapping that ramp up the costs, though those do tax the system. It’s also the filing of false claims and even excessive assessment submissions from health care providers.

Are the Ontario auto insurance changes a result of fraud or is fraud a result of the current system? We asked Barb Sulzenko-Laurie, IBC’s Vice President of Policy.

Barb Sulzenko-Laurie: It depends on how you define fraud. If the resources are in the system and anyone who’s using the system says I have a right to use those resources, is that fraud? I wouldn’t call that fraud. I also don’t expect that people who are injured for the first time in a motor vehicle accident know what’s good for them so they’re completely in the hands of people who are advising them. So, is that fraud? I don’t think so. If they overuse the resources and certainly they don’t intend to develop chronic pain conditions and so on. What I think it is is the combination of the richness of the system to begin with and then the fact that there are so many stakeholders, so many different kinds of med rehab providers who are offering their services and they’re supported by the legal community to maximize the use of the available resources. So we’ve had the results that we’ve had in terms of cost to drivers which I think we have to reverse. People are having a hard enough time out there dealing with their housing costs, their food costs, their clothing costs; they should not have to face continuing increases in the price of auto insurance.

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