Personal Injury Medical Bills

Answer:

Last week, we got a call from a lady who had been injured in a premise. She wanted to know who was going to pay her bills for her injuries. If you are without health insurance coverage, if you haven’t been injured, you get evaluated, you find out that you’re okay, you just had a little scrape, the premises at the minimum can pay for your medical expenses through your medical payment coverage. If you’re seriously injured or even injured to any degree, then you could go through your health insurance or often we can have you evaluated by physicians who will wait to be paid out of the proceeds of any recovery we get for a condition that existed on the premises that shouldn’t have or for some sort of negligence on the part of the premises owner. Sometimes clients call and tell us they were injured in an accident due to somebody else’s fault; either they forgot, they were in a hurry, or some people are just opposed to it still. What I tell those clients is you are able to receive compensation for injuries sustained in that car accident as long as the seat belt would not have prevented them. For example, if you’re struck from the side and you break your arm against the door, you have a valid claim for that injury. However, if by wearing a seat belt you would not have struck your head on the steering wheel, for example, then you are not protected. It’s called the seat belt defense. What would happen is, although we would claim all of the injuries that were caused by the accident, the defendants are allowed to assert as a defense that because you weren’t wearing a seat belt those injuries should be either precluded or diminished because of your failure to wear that device.