(WWJ) – A ruling from the Michigan Supreme Court on Monday will help some people who were injured in car crashes and in need of long-term care.
A 5-2 ruling affirmed critical benefits will remain for Michigan residents who were catastrophically injured before the law went into effect in 2019. The high court ruled that more than 15,000 people who were injured prior to the new law can’t have their insurance benefits reduced while they continue to receive critical long-term care.
Previously, catastrophic crash victims were entitled to lifetime payment for “all reasonable charges” related to care and rehab. But under the 2019 overhaul – passed by the Republican-led legislature and signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer – a provision of the law capped reimbursements to 55% of what providers were charging for services not covered by Medicare in January 2019.
Under a fee schedule, the limits fell slightly in each subsequent year, but Monday’s ruling puts a halt to caps on necessary coverage for those victims.
Monday’s ruling said a “vested contractual right” to ongoing benefits “cannot be stripped away or diminished,” noting the legislature did not declare an intent to do so.
Among those in support of Monday’s ruling was Peggy Campbell, with the grassroots advocacy group “We Can’t Wait.” The group has been among many fighting the law since it went into effect, but Campbell told WWJ the fight isn’t over, as they aim to have the rest of the law overturned.
“We are going to continue fighting for those who were injured after 2019. So we are just going down a little bit of a different path right now, so we just need to regroup and renovate our strategies,” Campbell said.
Former Red Wings player Vladimir Konstantinov is among those in need of long-term care after he was catastrophically injured in a 1997 limousine crash after the team won the Stanley Cup.
Konstantinov and his caretakers were among a group of advocates that held a rally in Lansing calling for change to the law earlier this summer.
But for others, Campbell says the ruling came too late.
“People like Brian Woodward, who didn’t have family members here to care for him and so he was shuffled around to nursing homes for two years. He was in nursing homes and in and out of hospital intensive care units and finally this morning his body couldn’t hold out any more and he died,” she said.
Democratic Justice Elizabeth Welch wrote the opinion, joined by three other Democrats and Republican Chief Justice Elizabeth Clement. Justices David Viviano and Brian Zahra dissented.
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