Can Health Insurance Get Paid From My Personal Injury Case?
In our article about health insurance liens, we discussed what health insurance liens are, when they occur, and how they affect you after you are in a car accident or slip and fall. Though you now know the definition and the process of a health insurance lien, you may still be wondering if there is any way to avoid paying your insurance out of your settlement by choosing not to proceed with the case at all. In this blog post we’ll talk about the consequences of not responding to your health insurance once they issue a lien against your settlement.
What is Subrogation?
Let’s say you are in a car accident and you are quoted a modest settlement amount. You consider proceeding with the case until you are issued a health insurance lien against your case. Now you notice that the lien would take the majority of your payout. In this scenario, you might think that it isn’t worth it to proceed with the case because you will not receive much compensation once your health insurance takes their amount. Unfortunately, there are some down sides to this.
Your health insurance company has the right to file a case against the third party on your behalf. This is called subrogation and it falls under their right to reimbursement of injuries caused by third party accidents. If this happens, your insurance company would act in your place to file a case against the at fault driver and receive a large percentage of the final settlement.
Subrogation and You
If your insurance company decides to subrogate, they are required to notify and inform you of their proceedings, but you are not involved in the case on a large scale. This may be a positive for some people because less involvement means less headaches and paperwork, but it also means that you will probably get less of the settlement amount. This can be a complicated issue, so please make sure you speak to an attorney regarding this situation if it arises.
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