Joshua Rosen: Anti-stacking plan bad for consumers

Accidents happen every day, and they easily could happen to any of us at any time. Insurance is a protection if an accident occurs, and it is important to know that you are adequately covered and not forced to dip into savings or go into debt because of someone else’s carelessness or reckless conduct. That is what automobile insurance is meant to do.

Because we pay our premiums, we have the right to expect financial protection, especially if the mishap involves an uninsured (UI) or underinsured motorist (UIM). Now some members of the Pennsylvania Legislature want to change the law that allows us to choose to have our auto insurance better protect us through an option known as “stacking.”

Stacking simply means that if a household auto policy or policies cover more than one vehicle, we can stack or add the amount of UI or UIM coverage for each vehicle, thus multiplying the amount of coverage protection. Stacking was added to the law in 1990, and the only way to lose this automatic benefit is to sign away your rights in exchange for lower premiums.

This consumer-friendly policy has helped Pennsylvania drivers for decades, and for those decades, insurance companies have supported stacking and have benefited by charging modest additional premiums for the right to stack. But now they are raising objections.

Their change of heart comes from the recent invalidation by the courts of automobile coverage exclusions, which often are contained in the fine print of multi-paged documents. Luckily, our Pennsylvania Supreme Court has had the backs of consumers and held the insurance companies accountable for the policy wording they write.

However, some elected officials in Harrisburg want to do the insurance industry’s bidding and tinker with the law by eliminating your automatic ability to stack insurance coverage and making you pay higher premiums in the process. There is no assurance that insurance companies would even write or offer these new policies, and there appears to be no other state where people can purchase more UI and UIM coverage than bodily injury coverage.

The end result will be a double loss for consumers — more money out of your pocket and an inability to get adequate coverage. If, through Senate Bill 676, the Legislature were to eliminate the current benefits of stacking, you and your family would not be able to get better financial protection, and insurance companies would see a substantial increase in profits.

The insurance industry wants you to think that stacking is too complicated for consumers to figure out. To the contrary, stacking is as simple as it gets. You can double, triple, quadruple and so on, the protection for you and your family from an underinsured motorist in correlation to the number of cars you own.

The proposed legislation is what is truly complicated. Not only does the bill propose an impossible model for determining premiums, but it completely contradicts public policy by allowing consumers to infinitely protect themselves while only maintaining minimum coverage to protect the rest of their community.

The Legislature should focus on making sure consumers have the insurance coverage they need and not on unworkable plans. Insurance industry-backed legislation is never good for consumers and will result in increased profits, less coverage and money out of your wallet.

Contact your state senator and representative in Harrisburg today and tell them to oppose any effort to eliminate stacking.

Joshua Rosen is comptroller for the Pennsylvania Association for Justice and chief operating officer for Simon & Simon PC.