There are different kinds of coverage that may be available under your insurance policy that could help in a situation like this. Specifically, there's a coverage called PIP or Personal Injury Protection. If you have that type of coverage, it pays money for your medical bills and 80% of your lost wages up to your PIP coverage limit. And PIP pays as you go. So if you have $100 bill at a doctor followed by a $1500 hospital bill, well instead of waiting for that other party to settle your case, you can collect the money now from your PIP insurance. Another great thing about your PIP insurance is that just because you got paid that $1600 it doesn't mean that the responsible party then gets a credit for the $1600 you received under your PIP payments. Essentially you get to recover twice, you get to recover from the PIP payment and then you still get to recover for the same medical bills through the responsible party.
What Should I Do with Medical Bills While My Personal Injury Case is in Process?
That's a very good question. Oftentimes a problem with a personal injury case is that you only get to settle a case one time. So you're not getting paid as you time goes on. If you have a $1,000 hospital trip followed by a $500 chiropractic visit or orthopedic visit, the insurance company isn't going to pay those bills as you continue to accrue them. So the problem becomes that you get backlogged with bills while your personal injury case is waiting to be settled or waiting for a trial date to be set.
If you have health insurance, this is one way that you can cover bills- by submitting them to your health insurance and hopefully having a small deductible or co-pay. However, without health insurance, you are really stuck.
There are different things that we can do as attorneys to try and prevent your medical providers from sending your bills into collections. For example, we may be able to negotiate small payments periodically. So sometimes our clients have a lot of success paying small amounts every month, $10, $15, $20 a month prevent it from going to collections and then at the end of the case we're able to pay off the rest of the balance in full.
Medical providers also know they are more likely to get paid if an attorney represents you. They know that you are equipped to deal with the insurance company and are doing your best/
