We wonder how the members of our Michigan House of Representatives can sleep at night.

Thanks to their inaction, Senate Bills 530, 531 and 575 are languishing in the state House Committee on Insurance and Financial Services.

Radio reports from Michigan Public in Ann Arbor said recently that activists, who’ve been fighting to restore long-term care for catastrophically injured car crash survivors, have mounted a campaign calling attention to state Rep. Brenda Carter, D-Pontiac, and her inaction on bills that would restore access to care for these crash survivors.

Carter is in charge of the House Insurance and Financial Services Committee and she has declined to schedule the Senate bills for a hearing before her committee. Those bills would establish statewide reimbursement rates for long-term care services for crash victims and — finally — honor the court’s ruling to restore what the state had pledged to provide.

But Carter told Bridge Michigan she does not think the Senate bills are the right answer. “We must be cautious with drafting legislation for such a complicated system,” she said, adding that a “narrow fix” was needed that would not raise rates for those who could least afford it.

Carter has indicated she is working to develop alternate bills that would address the problem of long-term care access for survivors. No alternate plan has been made public, of course.

However, that’s beside the point.

Here’s the point: The state Supreme Court ruled on July 31, 2023, in the Andary v. USAA Casualty Insurance Co. case that the changes lawmakers enacted in 2019 to Michigan’s auto no-fault system do not apply retroactively.

So it has been made quite clear, under the law, that crash survivors — like Brittney Ruckle of Traverse City, who was 9 when she was catastrophically injured — have a pre-existing contract for insurance coverage and the care they require every day. Period.

As a result of this flawed legislation, people have suffered and some have died because they did not receive the care they had paid for — care that the state had promised them.

Lawsuits were filed. Insurance companies fought these claims. The courts considered all the arguments and came back with a final ruling. The insurance companies lost. It took years to resolve.

Nearly a year ago now, the state Supreme Court ruled. The decision has been handed down. And yet state legislators still fail to act. This is unacceptable on so many levels — from the human price being paid to the realization of how badly state governance can go wrong.

The dysfunction even rises to the executive branch with the governor, who signed the original bills into law. At that time, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer even acknowledged the problems with this legislation and assured the people that fixes would be made.

So we ask: When?

And then we wonder why. Why are lawmakers so reluctant to fix laws requiring insurance companies to honor the promises that were made? Perhaps those insurance industry contributors, who support Carter’s re-election campaign with generous donations, are advising her? Does that account for the inability of legislators to act?

The next obvious question is what. What can be done?

We have an idea: The state Supreme Court could hold each and every legislator on the House Insurance and Financial Services Committee in contempt of court for failing to perform their duty to uphold the law.