GRAND RAPIDS - It was Valentine’s Day 2001 when the vehicle then-16-year-old Emily Blauw was driving hit a patch of black ice and spun out of control and hit a tree in Ottawa County.
Blauw suffered a debilitating spinal cord injury and to this day her legs and hands are paralyzed. She spent nearly five months after the crash in rehabilitation at Mary Free Bed in Grand Rapids.
Now, as a therapist at that hospital, the wheelchair-bound Blauw is one of many fighting to preserve the decades-old Michigan no-fault insurance law she credits with giving her a mostly independent life.
The movement to reform Michigan’s no-fault law, which guarantees lifetime medical care to automobile crash victims regardless of who caused the accident, recently has gained traction in the Legislature.
The matter was brought to the forefront by insurance groups and other proponents who argue the current system is unsustainable because of increasing medical costs.
State lawmakers have spent weeks considering different proposals, including capping the lifetime payout to new crash victims. Such discussions have no-fault advocates crying foul and trying to put a human face on the policy.
”This is just short-sighted and could possibly be interpreted as politically expedient,” said David Blauw, Emily’s father and a representative from spiritual care services at Holland Hospital. “It’s not going to help people like Emily.”
Emily and David Blauw attended a meeting of nearly 30 people Thursday night of the Coalition Protecting Auto No-fault, or CPAN, at Allendale Township Library.
CPAN comprises health and other professionals from across the state, including local institutions such as Mary Free Bed, Spectrum Health System and Hope Network.
Proposals by the insurance industry would allow people to choose their level of care, which has been advertised as allowing people to choose their level of payment, said Margaret Kroese, vice president of Hope Network Rehabilitation Services.
But under the legislation, the maximum cap would be $5 million. Such a plan, Kroese said, would not cover all lifetime costs and likely would be avoided by most as too expensive.
“Clearly people are concerned about the changes,” Kroese said. “I think there’s definitely the energy. I’m optimistic that we won’t see changes as drastic (as current proposals).”
No-fault proponents acknowledged the system is imperfect and might need tweaking, but insisted it serves as a national model for patient care.
Mary Rigo-Burdo, brain injury program manager at Mary Free Bed, said most patients her division sees are children whose age would be adversely impacted by a lifetime payout cap.
No-fault typically covers charges associated with recovery after critical injury in an accident, including necessary home improvements for the handicapped or round-the-clock assisted living care.
”We’re preparing (patients) to be discharged back home or into the community, they’re not going to have the resources that people have now,” Rigo-Burdo said.
Rigo-Burdo was flanked by a handful of Mary Free Bed therapists, including Kris Fowler, a registered occupational therapist in the brain injury program.
”We want the best care for them and it would grieve us to not be able to do everything we can for that person,” Fowler said. “If we were not to have no-fault...it would be depressing to have to go to work and only be able to do so much and not everything you could for a person. I can’t imagine.”
For her part, Emily Blauw said Michigan’s no-fault law helped her achieve what could have been the unthinkable.
She went on to graduate high school, obtained degrees from Hope College and Western Michigan University and is gainfully employed helping people who endured trauma she knows all too well.
Emily Blauw is able to drive again, and because no-fault is funded through auto insurance premiums, she’s paying back into the system that helped her once again become “a productive member of society.”
”I was able to go to college like any other college student. If I had had the added expenses...I may not have been able to go to school, and I think on a huge level (no-fault) really took a lot of the burden away,” she said. “It has allowed me to function as a person and as an individual.”
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