Will a provision in the governor's budget drive up your car insurance rates? Depends on who you talk to. Governor Jim Doyle wants to increase minimum coverage amounts to $100-thousand per person, 300- thousand total coverage and 25-thousand property damage.
"It will make Wisconsin the highest minimum standard state in the country, and it will likely drive insurance rates between 33 and 43 percent on many low and middle income families," says Wisconsin Insurance Alliance President Andy Franken. "Everybody's rate are going up, but those who can least afford it will be hit the hardest."
"Well, they'll have to prove that, because our information and research shows that that's just absolutely not true," says Keith Clifford, a Madison attorney with the Wisconsin Association of Justice , says their survey of insurance companies around the state found "almost imperceptible increases" in premiums if the governor's proposal goes into place. "In my own case, I saw one that went down, where I asked one company for quotes on exactly the same sets of circumstances, only increasing the minimum coverages, and my rates went down by seven percent." Trial lawyers support the increase because current minimum coverage levels are thirty years old.
