What Is Medical Payments Coverage?
I'm Griff Tonkin of the Arthofer and Tonkin Law Offices. We're exclusively a personal injury law firm. I want to talk to you today about an item of coverage that you may or may not have on your auto insurance policy.
It's called medical payments coverage. The way medical payments coverage works is when you renew or open a new auto policy, your auto insurance company will offer you the option of adding this coverage. Usually it's pretty inexpensive, a few dollars per month, and coverage limits go from as low as $1,000 to as high as $20,000.
Buying automobile medical payments coverage is probably a good idea to provide you maximum protection. Let me explain. You may have health insurance, but you likely have a deductible, a co-pay, and a maximum out-of-pocket.
Those things are things that you have to pay out of your own pocket, just like the name indicates. Medical payments coverage on your auto insurance pays your medical bills and can cover where your health insurance might not. Similarly, medical payments coverage can be used for medical providers that don't accept your insurance or don't deal with injury claims.
So medical payments coverage can be very helpful in allowing you access to care. Over our years handling personal injury claims, we've seen medical payments coverage used for everything like modest care, like chiropractic, massage, physical therapy, all the way through serious invasive medical procedures that are necessary to heal injuries. Getting appropriate medical care after an accident is important to both your recovery and your claim.
Medical payments coverage can also be particularly helpful if you've experienced denied medical care after an accident or are struggling to access treatment through traditional health insurance channels.
Some of the medical procedures and treatment that medical payments coverage can help pay for may become part of a claim for future medical damages, depending on the nature and extent of the injuries involved.
So medical payments coverage is probably something that you ought to look into because it dovetails nicely into your health insurance and can allow you access to care when you might not otherwise have it.
