Can I use my health insurance for a personal injury
If you have been injured in a car accident, using your health insurance to seek medical care is advisable. In some cases you may find the doctor you are trying to see won’t take your health insurance if they find out you have been injured in a car accident. They might try and make you pay out of pocket for your medical expenses.
One reason they might do this is because doctor’s have contracts with the health insurance companies. When they see a patient that has Aetna, Aetna and the doctor have already reached an agreement as to what Aetna will pay for the particular service rendered. In some cases this can be 40-65% of the actual medical bill. When you have a personal injury case, the doctor will want to not take your health insurance. Furthermore, he may feel he can get more money from you than the health insurance company.
It is essential to know if your health insurance plan will cover a car accident injury. In most situations, Health Insurance will not cover car accident injuries. In some cases, you can make use of PIP or Med Pay to ensure that your medical bills are paid.
Do health insurance plans cover car accident injuries?
It depends on the type of health insurance plan that you have. Most if not all health coverage will not cover accident injuries, while others do cover accident injuries. You need to know if your health insurance will cover an accident injury. In most cases it will not. However, there are some instances that it will. If they do cover the cost, they may want reimbursement if you have a personal injury case pending. You don’t need to wait until you are in a car accident to find out. If your health coverage will not cover auto accident injuries there are other options.
If you have health insurance, try and use it
After your car wreck, you may take a trip to the ER. If you take a trip to the ER, you might ride in an ambulance. Use your health insurance. The ambulance service or ER doesn’t care if you have a personal injury case. All they care about is getting paid. If you don’t turn the bill over to insurance, it might be quite some time before it gets paid. If too much time has passed, it might get turned over to collections. Your credit could suffer.
Health insurance companies may have a clause in their policy that states they have the right to subrogate or get paid back if a favorable injury settlement is recovered. It is still wise to use your health insurance in the event you are injured in a car accident. You get the medical care you need right away, instead of having to wait.
I thought the at-fault insurance company was responsible for my medical bills?
If you were injured in a car accident and the accident was not your fault. The at-fault party’s insurance company is responsible for your medical bills. However, the only problem with this is, they won’t pay you until you have completely finished medical care. They will not pay you as you go. There are a couple of ways around this. You could get Pip or med pay.
Med Pay or Medical Payments
Medical payments are designed to pay for medical care or visits to the doctor. This coverage is for you and anyone in your car. It doesn’t matter who was at fault for the car wreck. This coverage will allow you to see a doctor and use whatever treatments are necessary. The dollar amount is set by you, the policy holder. Med pay will pay out up to the dollar amount you set if your injury requires it. Even if your health insurance will pay for car wreck injuries, you still should have Med Pay coverage. It can be used as the primary and then secondary. It is easier for a doctor to bill than health insurance, so it’s a great advantage to health insurance in the event of a car accident.
Med Pay usually comes in increments of thousands of dollars. This amount is per person, not per accident. If you have 4 people in your car, the amount will be the same for each person, you are not thrown in a pot and everyone gets to divide it.
PIP: Personal Injury Protection
PIP. The one thing that you can use immediately when you are hurt in a car accident. For those that don’t know what PIP stands for, it is personal injury protection insurance. When you look at what PIP really is, you will notice that this is quite similar to health insurance plans. The only difference is that you can only claim for injuries sustained in an accident. This includes you and anyone in your car, no matter if you were at fault or not.
In some states, it is a must that every driver have a PIP insurance policy. However, there are some of the states that don’t see this as a necessity. Pip can be helpful when you were in a car accident and sustained a lot of injuries that are going to cost a lot of money. The most common difference between PIP and health insurance is that the doctor who accepts pip will do all the paperwork for you. Many Healthcare providers will not file for Pip or med pay. They consider this third party billing. And most PCP’s or primary care doctors will not file third party claims.
States that require Pip
- Delaware
- Florida
- Hawaii
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Dakota
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Utah
Should you claim for PIP or claim on your health insurance?
It is recommended that you should try a claim for PIP and not use your health coverage. You may have a medical deductible to meet if you try and file it under health insurance. This is why the PIP is there, so you should make use of it, after a car accident. However, if you want to get the claim approved, then you should make sure that you are following all the guidelines and rules for claiming from PIP. PIP will usually be the primary source of insurance until it runs out in car accidents.
The difference between PIP, med pay coverage, and health insurance
I can be really hard to understand what the differences between PIP/ Med pay coverage and health insurance coverage. They are covering medical treatment or procedures, but the PIP and Med Pay is only for car accidents. These are the differences that you should know between PIP and health coverage.
- With health insurance, they are only covering the patients that are on the policy. If you have someone in the car with you, that isn’t on your health insurance policy, there medical bills will not be paid for by the health insurance company. With PIP or med pay, everyone that was in the vehicle is going to be covered. No matter who they are and if they are on the policy or not. And, it doesn’t matter who was at fault.
- Health insurance is paying the medical bills alone. They don’t pay for the loss of income or the rehab center where you need to go to get the best car accident medical care. This is something that PIP will pay for. Pip helps you when you are out of work and having cash flow problems.
- When there is a death because of the accident, the health coverage won’t pay for the funeral. Then, you need to use your funeral policy if you have one. However, if you are claiming from the PIP, you are going to have the funds for the funeral as well. Pip will be paying for a funeral that was caused by a car accident.
What you can do when health insurance won’t pay for car accident injuries
1.Find a Doctor on Accident Doctor
Accident doctor has thousands of doctors listed around the country that treat auto accident injuries. And even if we don’t have one listed in your area, we will find you one. We do have some patients that live in remote areas, we do our best to find you a doctor that is close, and will treat your car wreck injuries.
2.Ask if the doctor will file third party car insurance
Ask your doctor or health care professionals if they will file third party. Depends on the state for which you reside, but in my opinion it is rare to find a medical doctor that will bill third party insurance. However, third party billing is very friendly in some states, such as Virginia.
3.File Personal Injury Protection
If you live in a PIP state, PIP becomes your primary insurance in the event of a car accident. Pip will cover most anything that can happen to you in an auto accident. However, pip has limits, and if you require surgery or have extensive hospital stays, pip will run out fast. Some states such as in NY, it is easy to find a specialist that will accept pip. However: in other states, such as FL, it might be harder to find a personal injury doctor that will just accept pip without going through a third party such as a chiropractor.
4.File a Med Pay Claim
Medical payments are in a nutshell, health insurance in the event of a car accident. Just like PIP, it could run out if you have a serious injury. I personally carry 10k in med pay; this is more than enough to cover a soft tissue injury. But if i had a broken bone or required surgery, I would be in trouble. So I’m going to call my agent and bump my coverage up to 50k. The difference in the policy amount after 10k is smaller than you think. The more you buy the less the premium goes up.
In my personal experience where a client had an extensive injury (required back surgery). Med pay was the primary coverage, when it ran out; Health insurance took over the burden. This tends to happen in more serious injuries. Health insurance may cover serious injuries that require surgery or hospital overnight stays.
5.Speak with your attorney
Attorneys know that when they have a client that has been involved in an auto accident, medical care will be an issue. Depending on the injuries sustained, will depend on how the attorney can help you. Most, not all attorneys have relationships with doctors in their area that will treat auto accident injuries. These doctors more than likely will treat on a medical, or attorney’s lien. Sometimes attorneys are a necessary evil. I don’t hold a very high opinion of most personal injury attorneys, however i believe there are some out there who genuinely want to help others in need. If you need an attorney after a car accident and don’t know who to speak with, contact us.
Tips to remember when claiming for a car accident injury
No matter if you are claiming from PIP or from your health coverage. These tips are some of the things that you should remember when you are claiming for a car accident injury:
• Make sure that you know what your PIP or Med Pay coverage is covering during an accident, and if you have a PIP or Medical payments coverage.
• When your claim is denied by the health insurance company, don’t panic. It is common for health coverage to deny auto accident injuries.
• If you don’t have a health insurance, Med Pay is something that you should seriously consider. It can help cover all your medical expenses when you are in a car accident.
Does your health insurance plan cover your injuries after an accident?
You need to know the answer to this question in order to know if you are covered when you are in an accident. Or, you should have a PIP insurance plan to ensure that you are covered and that you don’t have any worries about money while you are recovering from an accident. With this information and guidelines, you will know the difference between PIP, Med Pay and health insurance, and you will know if you should use your PIP or your health insurance plan when you sustained injury after a car accident.