A bill intended to combat insurance fraud by updating a 20-year-old law passed the Washington state senate in late February.
Senate Bill 6031 defines insurance fraud as its own crime, a Class B felony.
The bill passed on a unanimous vote.
SB 6031 was pushed for by Washington Insurance Commissioner Patty Kuderer.
State law established the Office of the Insurance Commissioner’s Criminal Investigation Unit in 2006, but the law hasn’t been updated since.
With SB 6031, Kuderer believes this gives the unit modern tools to investigate modern fraud.
The bill expands “victims of insurance fraud” to include insurance consumers and insurance beneficiaries, making them eligible for criminal restitution.
SB 6031 would also expand statutory reporting of suspected insurance fraud to the commissioner by adding regulators of healthcare or financial services professions, and other law enforcement and public safety agencies as among the required reporters of suspected fraud.
The bill now moves to the state House of Representatives for consideration.
The case is known as Estes vs. Palm Beach County School District, arising from a teacher who was injured tripping over a broken handicap ramp in 2021. In its March 23 opinion, viewable here, Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeals overturned a compensation court judge and found that for three decades judges had been misunderstanding the law as written.
Florida’s 1994 change to the workers’ comp statute of limitations is a tricky one, many in the Florida comp arena agree: It gives injured workers two years to file a claim – two years from the date the employee knew or should have known of the injury. But the law also “tolls” the statute of limitations for one year, from the date of the last benefit payment or medical treatment.
The Estes case turned on the exact meaning of the word “toll:” Does the law mean the two-year limitation clock must be paused—or should it be extended and restarted, giving claimants much longer to contest denials or ending of benefits.