Lawmakers want more car insurance options for Colorado drivers

John Fryar

Daily Record Denver Bureau



DENVER — Automobile insurance companies would have to offer medical-payment coverage to their Colorado customers, under one of the proposals being considered by a legislative panel.

Motorists could decline that so-called “med-pay coverage” and its likely additional cost.



But they’d have to at least be told that it’s an option that could protect them from expensive health-care bills after an accident, if they motorists aren’t adequately covered under separate health-insurance policies.



Colorado no longer requires that motorists buy auto insurance policies with personal-injury-protection coverage —something mandated before the state abandoned its no-fault insurance system two years ago.



But the state does still require motorists to have insurance in the event they’re found to be at fault in an accident that damaged someone else’s vehicle or injured the other driver or passengers.



However, the state does not require people to have health insurance, and lawmakers on the Interim Com-mittee on Auto Insurance have expressed concerns that too many Coloradans are going without health insurance or find the policies they do have to be inadequate in covering the cost of treating any injuries motorists may themselves suffer.



Rep. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, and Sen. Tom Wiens, R-Castle Rock, unveiled proposals at Wednesday’s Auto Insurance Committee meeting that would make Colorado a “mandatory-offer state” insofar as the availability of med-pay coverage.



Carroll said she likes the concept, because the idea of fewer state mandates about the coverage that must be bought works only when consumers making insurance buying decisions know their choices.



The committee reviewed more than a dozen of its members’ proposals for amending Colorado’s current auto-insurance laws on Wednesday. Final votes on forwarding measures to the 2006 Legislature’s consideration are scheduled for Oct. 19.



There was no renewal Wednesday of previous meetings’ arguments over how much Colorado motorists may have actually saved in premiums after the change from no-fault auto insurance – a system in which the insurance company theoretically was obligated to pay its customer’s bills no matter who was at fault in an accident.



Colorado now has a “tort” system that ultimately places that bill-paying responsibility on the driver deter-mined to be at fault, meaning that motorists may eventually have to go to court to get the at-fault driver or that driver’s insurer to pay for accident damages and injuries.