Insurance is meant to be a lifeline. Yet for Carmen Burgie, a quadriplegic survivor of a 2001 car crash, it has become a battleground, where profits outweigh people. Her story reveals how insurers systemically deny rightful no-fault insurance claims, leaving catastrophically injured people to bear the cost or forego critical services.
Carmen’s fight for care is rooted in Michigan’s 2019 changes to the No-Fault Insurance Act, which introduced utilization reviews to assess medical necessity. Borrowed from health insurance practices, they were intended to curb overtreatment. But in a no-fault landscape designed to ensure long-term care for catastrophic injuries, they became a weapon to cut off medically necessary care.
