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ISHPEMING -- Drivers in Michigan will pay an additional $18 for car insurance this year.
    
The increase is part of an assessment that is passed on from insurance companies.  It pays for a protection everyone in the state of Michigan has.
   
Every vehicle owner in the state of Michigan must pay the fee, and as of July 1, it's never been higher.  But many people don't even know what it is or that their rate has risen.
  
"No, I didn't know that," said Crystal Aikems.

"Everybody sees their auto insurance is going up, and I think the minute they inquire, they find out it is the MCCA driving it up more," said Diane Gauthier, executive agent at St. Onge Insurance in Ishpeming.

The MCCA is the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association, a system that offers unlimited lifetime medical benefits for people seriously injured in car accidents if their medical fee surpasses $325,000.
 
Michigan is the only state in the country to offer the unlimited medical benefits; owners will now pay about $73 per vehicle every six months.  Gauthier says the increase reflects current unpredictable health care costs.

"It's a roller coaster ride.  They can only go under the data of people who are injured and cost of health insurance,” Gauthier says.

But the people inside of vehicles aren't the only ones protected by the MCCA.  The MCCA also covers pedestrians and bicyclists, anyone that can be involved in an automobile accident, even if they don't own a vehicle.

But some people aren't so sure about paying up front for something they might never use.

"That’s not really fair," Aikems says.
    
Others say they wish they could have had the protection of the MCCA outside of Michigan.

"In California, someone actually hit me.  I just cross the street, I got green, he got red," said Obidiu Mepeties.  "I had to take a lawyer."