LANSING — A Michigan legislative leader said any proposal to automatically reduce auto insurance premiums would be "dead" on arrival in the Republican-controlled state Senate.

The pronouncement Wednesday from Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof is a reminder of just how difficult it will be for lawmakers to tackle one of their top priorities before year's end.

Meekhof, R-West Olive, called a government-mandated rate rollback "price fixing" and said Republicans should not interfere with private transactions.

Crain's reported Sunday that Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan wants a 25 percent to 30 percent mandatory rollback in auto insurance rates as part of a reform package that would reduce medical costs to insurers for injured drivers.

Michigan has some of the highest auto premiums in the country, especially in the Detroit area, in part because of an unlimited medical benefits for injured drivers.

The state's average auto insurance premium of $2,394 was 82 percent higher than the national average and 25 percent higher than the next closest state — Louisiana — in Insure.com's annual state-by-state comparison of rates.

But previous attempts to scale back Michigan's lifetime medical coverage for people catastrophically injured in crashes have failed.

Duggan, a Democrat, has been working with Republican House Speaker Tom Leonard to build a statewide coalition to push for reducing medical costs and insurance rates.

Duggan said Tuesday that they will propose that Michigan's unlimited lifetime coverage for medical expenses from car accidents be capped at $250,000. That would effectively create a cost shift to the driver's health insurance plans, be it a private carrier or a taxpayer-funded plan such as Medicaid or Medicare.

"That's the way it works in all other 49 states and they're doing just fine," Duggan said in an interview on "The Nolan Finley Show" on Superstation 910AM. "But nobody else has this thing that you can run up whatever bills that you want at whatever rates that you want for as long as you want."

Duggan has said Michigan is the only state in the country that bars senior citizens from using their Medicare health insurance benefits to pay for treatment of injuries sustained in a car accident.

"The average senior in this state is paying $1,000 a year in auto insurance for medical coverage they don't need," Duggan said Tuesday.

— Crain's Senior Reporter Chad Livengood and the Associated Press contributed to this report.