Pittsburgh wrongful death, car accident and slip and fall attorney Bernie Tully wants to give you FREE legal advice that will save you $$.
If you are in a car accident the question often becomes who do you turn your medical bills into for payment. Under Pennsylvania law your own auto insurance company must initially pay any medical bills related to your car accident. It gets better. That law is the same even if you are the one who causes the accident. Your medical bills will still be paid by your own company. The reason for that is because Pennsylvania is in what is called a no-fault state. No Fault means your own auto insurance company must pay your medical bills regardless of fault.
If the car accident was not your fault your auto company must pay your medical bills AND they cannot raise your insurance rates because you submit your bills for payment.
How does this free car accident advice save you money? Well suppose that you did not read this blog and submitted your medical bills after an auto accident to your private health insurance carrier. They would likely pay your bills. However they might look to you for reimbursement of all the bills they paid in your behalf in the auto accident. That is called a lien and private insurance companies often assert those liens if there is a settlement in your case.
If your auto accident case settles for $100,000 and your private insurance company asserts there is a lien for $10,000 you can see the real benefit of your auto insurance company paying your medical bills for you. Why? Because they cannot ask you for reimbursement of your medical bills. This is true for up to the limits of your medical coverage.
Again it gets better. Your auto insurance company does not pay dollar for dollar what your medical bills are. That’s because Pennsylvania law also requires something called an Act 6 reduction of all the bills they receive. If you treat with a chiropractor and they bill your auto insurance company $1000 for medical treatment, your auto carrier may only pay $200 of that amount as full payment of the chiropractic bill. And the chiropractor cannot legally look to you for payment of the $800 balance. Therefore you pay nothing for any of your medical treatment up to the limits of your auto policy.
Since most people take the minimum $5000 amount for medical bills, that means that you can roughly incur about $8000 in actual medical bills and you will not have to pay a dime of that amount. Pretty cool right? This was a part of the states attempt to get a handle on all the medical bills that people were incurring when they were in an auto accident.
If you are involved in an auto accident turn all of your medical bills initially over to your own insurance company for payment. Do not turn your initial medical bills into your private health provider or you may incur a medical lien from any settlement of your car accident case
Hope my blog saves you some $$$.
Thanks for reading.
Bernie the attorney.