ESCANABA — One of the bigger campaigning issues this year is the high cost of no-fault auto insurance in Michigan. It is an issue that Bob Romps says he hears all the time as he campaigns for State Representative.

Romps of Escanaba is running against State Rep. Beau LaFave of Iron Mountain who voted for a bill to lower auto insurance premiums but it did not pass the House. Romps says he would not have voted for the bill.

“I would if the bill was written correctly,” Romps said. “They have $22 billion in the ‘slush fund’ if you will for the catastrophic and they raised that. The previous bill, they were going to take that $22 billion and just divided it up among five insurance companies. You do the math. That’s money we paid in case something bad happened. Why would they get that money?”

Romps says the costs for treatment needs to be more realistic to costs under regular health insurance and that catastrophic claims needs to have different levels of choice for users.

The Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association announced a 13 percent increase in March for 2018, which follows a 6.3 percent increase in 2017.