Capitol to Courthouse Headliners: July 2

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Interest groups taking sides in Florida’s ‘no-fault’ insurance fight

TALLAHASSEE It’s known as “no fault” and was designed to safeguard motorists hurt in an accident. The down side, say auto insurers, is that it also shields fraudsters and doctors, lawyers and others who milk the system and jacks up insurance rates for the rest of us.

 

PCI: Fla. PIP Sunset Should Save Consumers

Motorists in Florida should see a drop price on their insurance policies when the state’s no-fault personal injury protection law sunsets October 1, an industry trade group is forecasting.

 

Editorial: There’s talk of another special session.

Maybe there’s hope for extending Florida’s no-fault auto insurance after all. Gov. Charlie Crist apparently thinks so and he believes a special session of the Florida Legislature is necessary to do it.

 

After long fight, Pembroke Pines condo receives $8 million insurance check for Wilma damage
 
For 18 months, the patched roofs leaked at the Park Place condo complex while the board of directors tried to get its insurance company to fix the damage caused by Hurricane Wilma.

 

Court to hear Katrina insurance appeal

JACKSON, Miss. — A federal appeals court has set Aug. 6 as the date to hear arguments on whether Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. should be forced to cover storm surge damage to a couple’s home from Hurricane Katrina.

 

No-Fault’s Future? Ask Charlie

TAMPA – The company behind those ever-present 1-800-ASK-GARY commercials has become a powerful force in Florida’s accident treatment industry. Now it and other accident clinics might be in a fight for their survival.

 

Democrats Court Hispanic Leaders

ORLANDO – Democrats sensing an opportunity for gains among the nation’s fastest-growing minority group swarmed a gathering of 1,000 Hispanic elected officials from across the nation here this weekend.

 

Lawyers decry state’s disposal of insurance complaint records

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A state agency has stopped disposing of records related to consumer disputes with insurance companies after lawyers and open records advocates decried the loss of a wealth of information that could be used to hold the industry accountable.

 

State destroyed its records of insurance-company complaints

For a year, a state agency has been throwing away records relating to consumer disputes with insurance companies.

 

Florida election mayhem for 2008

How the home of hanging chads, Katherine Harris and butterfly ballots is shaking up the Democratic primary.

The biggest political event over the past three months in the Democratic presidential race had nothing to do with the candidates, their fundraising prowess, their debates or their TV spots. In fact, it originated with the Republicans, though it had no direct connection to the Bush White House.

 

Home buyers duped into foreclosure

The beige ranch house at 4501 SW 13th Ter. looks much like any other on this ordinary street in the Little Gables neighborhood.  But it’s one of a string of homes bought for more than $7 million in suspicious mortgage deals orchestrated by the former co-owner of a South Beach talent agency and her husband. The deals wrecked the credit of at least five people and sent eight homes into foreclosure, one of them twice and another three times.

 

30,000 In Health Plan Taken Out, Out, Out

TAMPA – Federal officials quietly canceled enrollments of about 30,000 Medicare beneficiaries from the troubled Any, Any, Any health insurance plan soon after its launch Jan. 1 and are withholding money from the company’s payments as reimbursement for premiums covering months they were enrolled, government and company officials confirmed this week.

 

South Floridians increasingly victimized by medical identity theft

As front desk coordinator at Cleveland Clinic in Weston, Isis Machado was in a prime position to steal medical records.

 

Medicare targets S. Florida fraud

WASHINGTON Fraudulent Medicare billings submitted by medical equipment suppliers in South Florida and the Los Angeles area are the target of a pilot program to be announced today by the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

Geico Goes Cruising for Motorcyclists

In Cyberspace, Networking Site Created to Hook Insurance Customers

Think of it as a corporate MySpace for Moto Guzzis, or a Facebook for flatheads. (Harley flatheads, that is.)  Washington’s Geico insurance company is turning to social networking to drum up business for its motorcycle policies.

 

Massachusetts Begins Universal Health Care

BOSTON — There is a lot of talk about overhauling health care in the United States, but Massachusetts is actually trying to do it — again.

 

Global warming rally directed at Buchanan

SARASOTA — About 60 activists, some wearing life preservers, filled the parking lot outside Rep. Vern Buchanan’s Sarasota office on Sunday to call attention to rising sea levels and other threats posed to Florida by global warming.

 

Levee work might imperil French Quarter

The government’s repairs to New Orleans’ hurricane-damaged levees may put the French Quarter in greater danger than it was before Hurricane Katrina, a weakness planners said couldn’t be helped, at least for now.

 

Judge’s son gets to take his own place on the bench

DAYTONA BEACH — He might be Volusia County’s newest circuit judge, but David H. Foxman will have the unique perspective of deja vu when he reports for his first day of work today.

 

Offshore Tax Breaks Lure Money Managers

William E. Grayson, the president of EGM Capital, a hedge fund firm in San Francisco, has never set foot on the Cayman Islands, but he knows that sun-baked Caribbean haven quite well. That’s because he set up one of his funds in the Caymans, where lucrative tax breaks and fabled financial secrecy have made this British territory a magnet for hedge fund managers.

 

As Senator Rose, Lobbying Became Family Affair

On Christmas Eve 1994, Fred D. Thompson Jr. was out of a job. A 34-year-old self-described late bloomer, Mr. Thompson had graduated from law school just two years before and practiced law only for his father, Fred D. Thompson Sr., who was about to be sworn in as a senator from Tennessee.

 

View ‘investment seminars’ with a wary eye

The grilled salmon at the free lunch seminar tasted fine. The mashed potatoes had too much pepper, though. But the worst aftertaste was from the speakers who kept scaring and pressuring the mostly elderly audience with half-truths and distortions.