“Gonna wrap it up this week. Looks like Michigan Health and Hospital Association has decided to put a little opposition out there so they created some social media anti-reform ads that were posted this weekend. They’re a little aggressive, but we’re going to be equally aggressive,” Shirkey said.
Senator Shirkey mentioned that this is an issue the state has been hoping to fix since the 1970s. “It is 40 years in the making to reform auto insurance to give people a choice to decide how much risk they want to take and how much they want to pay for auto insurance.”
The organizations have begun to launch anti-reform campaigns because it could spell doom for some companies who prop up the rest of their organization through expensive auto insurance coverage. “There are a lot of interest groups who have built their business models around these laws. They’re not doing anything illegal, but they’re deeply entrenched and they cost us a lot of money,” Shirkey said.
“To be fair, we have the best in the world, but we also have the most expensive in the world.”
Finally, we spoke on the budget. The House and Senate should be releasing their joint budget soon, and he said they will have increased road funding, but Shirkey sounded hesitant that it was enough to cross the line that Governor Whitmer has set for a budget she’d be willing to get behind. “I don’t know why my Governor has decided to draw those kinds of lines in the sand so early in the process. I can promise you that our joint House and Senate budget will include substantial increase for road. It may not include a long-term plan. What we’re going to propose is not only going to be significant, but also sustainable and include very little increase in taxes.”
