Personal Injury Lawyer Salt Lake City, Utah
When injured, your very top priority should always be to receive the medical attention you need. Injuries can be very serious, so the last thing on your mind will be filing a personal injury lawsuit. However, after receiving medical care, you will need to know if you can still file a lawsuit after receiving coverage through your insurance policy. This is a matter you should fully understand before an injury ever happens. There are three matters to consider:
- Subrogation
Most health insurance policies have a subrogation clause. This basically just means that any winnings from a personal injury suit will be used to repay the insurance company. This is actually quite reasonable, if you think about it. If you kept 100% of the winnings, it would be like you were paid twice: once by the defendant and once by the insurance company. Both a lawsuit and an insurance policy aim to return you to the financial state you were in prior to the injury, rather than for you to profit from it.
If you receive any compensation for pain and suffering in the lawsuit, this amount will not be used to repay the insurance company.
- Adjustments
Insurance companies often get price adjustments for medical procedures. For example, a specialized surgery that normally costs $10,000 may only cost $5,000 for an insurance company that has a deal with the hospital. This may be confusing for you to know how much to claim in your personal injury suit. The ruling is that insurance adjustments do not affect claims in lawsuits. So in this scenario, you would still claim the full $10,000 in a personal injury suit. Additionally, if you won your lawsuit, the defendant would be responsible for paying the full $10,000.
- Your Rates
The final matter for you to consider is your rates. If you make use of your health insurance policy, then your rates will likely increase. Even if you file a personal injury lawsuit, win, and repay the amount to your insurance provider, your rates still may increase. This means that you have the option to forego reporting your injury to your insurance provider and rely solely on your lawsuit to pay your medical bills. This may avoid having your rates increase, but it is also very risky. If you lose your lawsuit, then you will have no way to recovering any amount of compensation and will have to pay your medical bills entirely out of pocket. This is a matter you should contemplate on carefully and discuss with your personal injury lawyer in Salt Lake City, Utah from Rasmussen & Miner.