Why can’t I use my med pay NOW?!

First, you need to know what Med Pay (maybe). So read this.

Now that you know that med pay if first party coverage that you have on your auto policy, you’re wanting to know why you can’t/shouldn’t use it right now to pay your bills.

Here’s the trick answer to the trick question: You can. But it might come back to haunt you.

There’s the age-old adage: Do you want it done fast or do you want it done right? That sort of applies here. You can do whatever it is you want with your med pay. You can process it now and pay bills. You can process it now and bet on sportsball or make a Tik Tok or whatever people do with money these days. The problem is that this may have consequences down the road.

In the context of an automobile injury claim, you have your liability claim – the claim against the bad guys who hit you – and you have (potentially, if you bought it) first party coverage in the form of med pay. You may have a few bills, you may have a ton of bills. Some of those bills might be protected by a lien. You may have health insurance, or you may not. You may have a health plan that expects to get paid back from some or all of those settlement proceeds, or you may not. The problem is YOU probably don’t know enough to avoid shooting yourself in the foot by using that med pay early on in the process. I might not even know, but that’s why I don’t process that med pay until I DO know what all you have and what I need to protect.

In other words, you might have a contractual and/or legal duty to preserve that med pay to pay some other medical bills, so if you process it too soon, you may create more problems for yourself than you are solving.

This is yet another example of how these complicated issues should be addressed by a seasoned, experienced personal injury attorney. If you have such issues, call me at 919-929-2992 and I’ll see if I can help.