Last year was witness to various enacted anti-fraud initiatives including Louisiana’s detailed anti-fraud plan criteria and Rhode Island’s requirements to establish processes which allow for the detection, reporting and preventing fraud. Continuing the trend this year, many states have moved forward with the introduction of various bills focused on insurance fraud.
So far this year, a few states which do not currently have a specific fraud unit within their insurance departments, have used the legislative process to start consideration of this option. Alabama’s HB 460 and SB 354 propose to establish an insurance fraud unit in the insurance department. Both bills define insurance fraud and authorize the Alabama Department of Insurance to oversee and investigate suspected insurance fraud. Connecticut’s SB 309 would establish an insurance fraud division within that state’s Insurance Department. Maine’s SP 280 would create an insurance fraud division within that state’s Bureau of Insurance.
Hawaii’s SB 386 proposes to expand the current jurisdiction of the Insurance Fraud Investigation Branch to include workers’ compensation. This bill would effectively transfer jurisdiction over workers’ compensation fraud from the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations to the Insurance Division.
Michigan’s SB 211, echoing some of the newly enacted requirements we saw last year, proposes a mandate for insurers to develop a plan to detect and prevent insurance fraud. These plans would also have to be filed with the commissioner. And while all of the above bills are still pending in their respective state legislatures, Kansas has actually enacted HB 2030 which extends that state’s existing requirement to file fraud plans to July 2016.
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