MPI beefs up its personal injury benefits package

MPI is retroactively enhancing its benefits package for victims of auto crashes.
The enhancements, expected to cost about $40 million, will include:
• enhanced coverage for extraordinary expenses for leisure and recreational activities. For example, MPI would pay for a specialized sport wheelchair to allow a paraplegic claimant to continue to be active in sports;
• travel and accommodation for extraordinary expenses to continue pre-accident activities. For example, a quadriplegic claimant may want to continue their pre-accident habit of visiting out-of-town relatives. The claimant’s hotel accommodations/expenses will now be covered if where they previously stayed is no longer accessible;
• enhanced coverage for home adaptation, beyond the current funding for the principal residence of a claimant. For example, where cottage life was an integral part of a claimant’s pre-accident life, enhancements will now allow for reasonable cottage renovations; and
• motor vehicle adaptations. Enhancements will now allow for the purchase of adapted motor vehicles for those catastrophically injured. Other qualifying claimants will now be eligible to modify more than one vehicle.
“This $40-million cost of retroactively providing enhancements to existing claimants can be safely absorbed with no negative impact on the program,” said Marilyn McLaren, MPI’s CEO and president.
“While we have not yet completed our year-end accounting, we expect that the value of outstanding claims liability could be reduced by approximately $250 million or 20%. These enhancements announced today will offset a portion of the reduction in claims costs. The going-forward costs of these enhancements represent less than one-half of one per cent on basic Autopac rates.”