One of the most common questions we receive in my office goes something like this: “I was injured in a car accident and I have medical bills, but I don’t know what to do. I have health insurance, but should I submit them to my health insurance company?” Well, the answer to that is yes, you absolutely should. In this article, I am going to talk to you about what we do at our office and what you should do when you have medical bills from a personal injury case.
There are several types of medical insurance or other forms of insurance that cover your medical bills when you are hurt in an automobile accident or another type of personal injury. First, we always try to use what we call medical payments coverage if it exists under your insurance or the insurance on the vehicle in which you were riding or another policy if you were named as an insured. What this means is that auto insurance sometimes has a provision, an extra amount of coverage, for your medical bills and we like to go there first.
Then, we need to submit these medical bills to health insurance. Health insurance has a duty and obligation to pay your medical bills, however, they can be reimbursed through a process known as subrogation on the back end when your case either settles or we go to court and get a judgment for you. Now how much to pay back and what to pay back to whom is the topic of an upcoming article. It is fair to say that you usually have to pay some or all of the money back to your health insurance company.
The point that I want to make to you is that it is very important for you to submit all of your medical bills immediately if you have been hurt to any applicable insurance company, including the insurance company that may have had medical payments coverage, and the insurance company that provides you with health insurance through you, a spouse, or perhaps a parent. It’s very important you do that because these bills can go against your credit and harm you and there is really not a lot we can do as a lawyer until your case settles if the medical providers, doctors, hospitals want to come after you. We can ask the medical providers to hold off, but oftentimes they will file lawsuits and come after you anyway.
