After you’ve been involved in a car accident and have received medical care, you will inevitably receive medical bills. You could be billed for the balance after your health insurance has paid its portion or you could receive a bill for the entirety of the charges. What should you do with them? The answer is rather simple: submit your bills to either your health insurance or your car insurance assuming you have medical payments coverage. This article will address how to perform the second option, although it is less beneficial to you.
In order to have your bills paid, you will need to contact your insurance and open a claim for the accident. This will require you to provide the details of the accident e.g. date, place, time and how it occurred. After doing so, you will be provided with a claim number. Typically, the claim will be assigned a medical payment unit internally. Bills should then be submitted to that unit for payments to be issued directly to the medical provider.
One reason to have your bills paid by your car insurance is because you may not have health insurance. In that situation, if you wish your bills to be paid right away and not wait until you resolve your case against the at-fault insurance company, you would have no other choice but to do so. Another reason is that your health insurance has paid the allowed amount and you have a copay or deductible or patient responsibility balance.
When should you submit the bills? The answer to that question depends on a multitude of factors such as the timing of your medical care, adjustments allowed by your health insurance carrier, your expected future medical treatment, the limit of your coverage. You don’t want to submit your bills too soon because you could exhaust all of the coverage and still have a good deal of treatment to be had. You must also be careful on which bill you have paid if you have numerous bills which total more than your actual coverage. The approach will vary on a case-by-case basis.
For more information, please call Kevin T. Yen at Strom & Associates.
Kevin T. Yen
Attorney, Strom & Associates
