Health Insurance

A lot of hard working families do everything right, they buy lots of insurance coverage for their health, their home, and their car. These families are very responsible and not likely to know why they would need a personal injury attorney following a car accident. They have very good health insurance that pays for all their medical treatment including expensive surgeries and rehabilitation. They may also have disability insurance that provides for supplemental income and may decide there is no need to hire an attorney as it appears nothing has been lost.

More recently accident victims may be encouraged to pursue a personal injury claim not by their friends and family, but the very same people that paid the medical bills. Health insurance carriers are routinely sending out letters to their insured practically demanding they pursue an injury claim. The reason is that the health insurance carriers have a right to get reimbursed for whatever medical expenses were paid out. The person insured by health insurance is not required to purse a claim and may opt not to pursue the claim and often they do not as there is no perceived loss.

A personal injury claim involves recovery for many different losses which are not all that apparent. The intent of personal injury claims is to put the victim back in the position he would have been if the injury causing event had never taken place. The damages are categorized into two categories. There are losses commonly described as special damages and there are damages often described as general damages. Special damages are a reference to the economic harm and can include such things as loss of income, medical expenses, out of pocket medical expenses, damage to a vehicle, and anything in the vehicle that may have been lost. The general damages is where there is wide disagreement among jurors, attorneys, and insurance carriers. General damages are those intangibles that are a very real loss, but hard to ascertain.

General damages can include and often include pain, suffering, inconvenience, loss of dignity, humiliation, and emotional distress. These are the intangibles that are hard to convert to a monetary value. There are many ways and approaches to conveying the loss and depending on the skill and experience of the personal injury attorney, it may or may not be evident that the injury victim suffered these losses.

The value in hiring a personal injury attorney is that the personal injury attorney is able to evaluate a personal injury claim much better than the injury victim and obtain what is fair for the injury victim as a settlement or verdict. If the matter requires a trial, it would be nearly impossible for the injury victim to get through the mountain of steps necessary to get to that point. Even experienced attorneys struggle with the process, there are many different rules and procedures required to get a case to trial. Then trial itself is overburden with seemingly silly and ridiculous rules which makes presentation of evidence difficult if not impossible for an individual that has never had the experience of presenting evidence in court proceedings.

A personal injury attorney is also skilled and experienced in the various laws and rules which allow for a reduction in the reimbursement to the health insurance carriers. Statistically liability insurance carriers do not like attorneys to be involved in significant injury claims, because the injury victim generally recovers more. A good personal injury settlement is more likely with an attorney than without. On smaller injury cases the same may not be true and many personal injury attorneys turn down smaller injury cases, because they know it does not help the injury victim.

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