If you were injured from a car accident and had major injuries, an ambulance probably transported you to a nearby hospital for treatment. When this happens, hospitals will provide medical treatment to injured individuals, and they will then bill the individuals for services. If this happened to you, you might be wondering how this will all work when it comes down to collecting a personal injury settlement for the case.
Understanding Personal Injury Cases
A car accident case falls into the branch of law known as personal injury if one party is at fault for causing the accident. If the person that struck your car was at fault, that person will be responsible for paying your medical bills and any other forms of compensation needed to cover your damages. For this to happen, you may need to hire a personal injury lawyer. If you don't, you will have to try to settle the case with the at-fault party's insurance company. Doing this is not recommended, simply because it is hard for an average person to know their rights in a case like this.
If you pursue a personal injury case and win, you will receive compensation for your damages and injuries, and your lawyer will work out determining an amount to ask for. You may have to pay your lawyer 33% to 40% of the total amount you receive, though, but your lawyer is likely to factor this in when calculating an amount to ask for.
How Your Health Insurance Will Work
One thing you need to understand about this is the way your own health insurance plan might work. The first thing to remember is that the at-fault party should be responsible to pay all your medical bills related to the injuries you sustained from the accident. The second thing to realize is that your own health insurance company is likely to pay the bills to your medical providers after medical treatment is given to you.
Because of the way this works, your health insurance plan was forced to pay out money that it shouldn't have had to pay. The money was not the responsibility of your own health insurance company. The result of this might be your insurance company coming after part of your settlement amount. This is normal and should be expected. Your health insurance company is entitled to receiving compensation back to cover all the expenses it paid on your behalf.
Why You Need to Understand This
Knowing this information is important, simply because it can affect the amount of money you actually receive from your settlement. Imagine if your settlement amount was going to be $100,000 after paying your attorney. If your health insurance plan had spent $70,000 paying for your medical bills, you would actually only receive $30,000 from your settlement.
To compensate for this, your attorney is likely to wait to file the case on your behalf until all the financial data is turned in and evaluated. Your attorney will make sure he or she asks for a settlement amount that will not only cover paying back your health insurance company, but that will also cover paying all the other related expenses. In addition, you are likely to receive some compensation simply from pain and suffering. There are other types of compensation you might also be able to request, and your attorney will help you determine which types you might qualify for.
Settling any type of personal injury case can be confusing to a person who has never been through it, and this is why you need an attorney to help you. To learn more, contact law firms like Kornfeld Law.
Share13 February 2017
Hello, my name is Matthew. Welcome to my site. I am here to talk to you about accident and personal injury attorneys. When I was involved in a serious accident, I had to recover for months in the hospital. My finances suffered due to mounting medical bills and lost wages. I dealt with considerable pain through every phase of the healing process. I worked with an accident and personal injury attorney to obtain compensation for the repercussions of the accident. I created this site to help others find an attorney to work with so they too could acquire compensation following an accident.