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Massachusetts Auto Insurance System
Many drivers in the state
of Massachusetts don’t understand how
their car insurance works. They say that
they couldn’t explain car insurance to
anyone even if you paid them to, because
the system just doesn’t make sense. They
say that the state decided that
regulators, rather than market forces,
were the best ones to set auto insurance
rates. But that is as far as they can get
in their explanation.
The state has some of the highest auto
insurance rates in the nation, but they
cannot keep popular companies from
surviving in their state. Because auto
insurance rates are usually competitive in
nature, for this is how it is done in
other states, it is possible for customers
to get good rates as companies vie for
your business. But not in Mass.
Here the state decided how much everyone
will pay, and because of that there is no
choice for the drivers and they have to
take what they can get. But Governor Mitt
Romney had people trying to find a
solution to the auto insurance mess, but
left office before anything was done about
it.
Now, Governor Deval Patrick is trying to
see what he can do for auto insurance
rates in the state as well. He had a group
studying the impact of car insurance on
the state, and they came up with the idea
that the state should move to a
competitive market for car insurance. The
panel says that they need to get better
rates for drivers, but they also said that
the rules that Romney had come up with for
high-risk drivers need to be slowed down
some so that they can be properly
evaluated.
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