Use Your Health Insurance PLEASE!
When you have an auto accident in North Carolina you still DEFINITELY want to use your health insurance UNLESS you have a compelling reason not to.
I know, I know, you might feel that the at-fault party should bear the cost of your care. Maybe they will! But there’s nothing in our system that makes them do that upfront. That means your bills are YOUR bills until we can get the bad guys to pay them. As such, you should treat them like there is no one else even potentially responsible for them but you. If you had these bills and there was no injury claim related to them, what would you do? You’d USE YOUR HEALTH INSURANCE! Exactly!
Your health insurance is there to shield you from the catastrophic costs of health care. And while it’s certainly a far from perfect system, it’s what we have and it can help reduce your out-of-pocket costs significantly. Because you have health insurance, the provider normally has to take what’s called a “contractual adjustment,” but what we normal folks might just call a discount, which means your health care will cost less than it otherwise might have. That can make a big difference later in your claim.
What you don’t want to have happen is to be stubborn about this and refuse to bill your health plan, only to find out you’re facing an uphill struggle getting the at-fault carrier to pay your bills. Then, if you try to go to your health plan to rescue you, it may be too late; most health plans have a deadline by which you have to submit bills to them, so if you aren’t on top of it, you might get yourself into a mess.
To reiterate: When you have an auto accident in North Carolina you still DEFINITELY want to use your health insurance UNLESS you have a compelling reason not to. If you aren’t sure your reason is compelling, talk to an experienced personal injury attorney. Talk to me. 919-929-2992.
Trackback from your site.