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There are several reasons you want to get medical attention as soon as possible if you've been injured in a serious auto accident. Here are just a few of the reasons:
1) If you wait too long before seeking care, the insurance company for the responsible party will argue that you aren't really injured or you wouldn't have waited so long. 2) Seeking medical attention right away is strong evidence that you were actually injured. 3) Going through your own health care channels, at least initially, is often persuasive that you are injured. 4) Seeking medical attention early helps document your injuries. Making sure you mention ALL your injuries during your first appointment is persuasive to an insurance company. Contrast that with NOT mentioning all your injuries and trying to introduce a new injury a few weeks later. That certainly looks suspicious. 5) Finally, seeking medical attention is more important than who is going to fix your car, or who said what to who at the accident scene. Don't get stuck on issues that don't matter as much as your health care. Keep your "eye on the ball." Your health is arguably one of your most important assets. It's simply a wise thing to do regardless of whether or not you choose to bring a claim against anyone. If you've been injured, you should also seek medical attention right away. It may seem obvious but many folks wait too long or don't get any care at all. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hello, everybody. My name is Robert Mansour. I'm a personal injury lawyer and I wanted to make a brief video today about liens and personal injury cases. You see, after you have your personal injury case and you settle your case, you're offered a certain amount of money from the insurance company. What you have to realize is that from that settlement amount, you have to pay the doctor's fees in some cases, outstanding medical bills. There may be liens on the file. For example, there's an attorney's fee. You may have to repay your health insurance company. They may have a lien. A workers' compensation insurance company may have a lien, Medicare...Medi-cal. In other words, you have to understand that the settlement amount is one thing, but then you have to pay all of these entities and then there is the residual amount that goes to the client. Let's say for example, I have a case that's settled for $20,000, and the client nets let's say $10,000. The clients in some cases get very frustrated and I understand why because they say, "Well, wait a minute. All I got was $10,000," and I say, "Wait a minute. You got $20,000, but you see, you had to pay a whole bunch of different service providers and then you got $10,000." The client say, "Well, that doesn't seem fair," but actually, that's how it works. You see, there's two components to these cases. There's the economic damages and the non-economic damages. The non-economic damages are sometimes called pain and suffering. Let's say you have $10,000 in bills and you wen to a jury, and you went to a trial and a jury came back and the jury said, "Okay. We're going to give you $10,000 for your bills." By the way, assuming they buy all of your bills. "Then we're going to give you say $10,000 in pain and suffering." That's your result, $20,000. You still have all these bills that have to be paid. You see, that's part of your recovery. In a personal injury case, your focus should not be on what you net but should be on the entire amount of the settlement. That is the value of the case and you will net less because different providers need to get paid. Of course, a good lawyer should explain these things to his or her client and make it very clear that this is how the process works. I hope you found this video helpful regarding liens and payments and personal injury cases. Thank you very much for watching. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hello, everyone. This is Robert Mansour. I wanted to make a brief video today about how to pay for your medical care when you're involved in an automobile accident. This is a very important issue and you cannot enter into it lightly. The firs thing that I do when I contact a client or when they talk to me is I say, "Okay. If I take this case, we have to decide how are we going to pay for your medical care." There are several options. If you have health insurance, that might be one way to do it. Have your health insurance pay for the medical care. Keep in mind that in most cases, your healthcare insurance company will have a right to be reimbursed if you recover money from the responsible party. If your health insurance company pays out $2,000 for your care and you recover $5,000 from the responsible party, you may have to repay your health insurance company if that is the case. That hold true for Medicare and Medi-Cal and most of the major health insurance companies out there. If you have medical payments coverage under your automobile policy, you might also be able to use that. Medical payments coverage is like having health insurance attached to your auto insurance policy. Usual policy amounts are $2,000, $5,000. I have seen some that are $25,000. It all depends on what you have if you have it available. The nice thing is that you can use that money to pay for your healthcare in many cases. Now, here's the thing. If your auto insurance company pays based on that provision, they have a right to reimbursement as well, and you have to make sure you take care of them at the end of your case. Another thing you can do is proceed on a lien basis, lien. What does that mean? That means that if you don't have health insurance and you don't have medical payments coverage, you might be able to get care from certain doctors who specialize in personal injury matters, or they don't specialize but they know how to do a personal injury case, they know how to handle one, and they accept them. Here's the thing. A lien means you're going to sign a form that promises to pay the doctor regardless of the outcome of your matter. You can't just tell the doctor, "Well, I didn't win and I lost the case," or "I decided not to pursue and so I don't want to pay you anymore." The doctor is not going to be very happy with that, nor is the physical therapist or the chiropractor or anybody that you hire on a lien basis. When you proceed on a lien, the doctor is basically fronting his or her services to you with the expectation that you're going to pay them out of the recovery of your case. What you may not realize is that you in most cases, owe the doctor regardless of the outcome of your case. Contrast that with your health insurance company and your medical payments coverage on your auto policy. In those cases, yes, you have to pay them back, but only if you recover money from the other party. If you lose or you don't recover any money from the other party, you don't have to pay them back versus going on a lien which is essentially a tab at the doctor's office, and having everything done that way in which case, you have to pay those healthcare providers regardless of the outcome of your matter. So you have to be very careful with how you proceed and how you choose to have those things paid for. Every case is different. In some cases, it makes sense to go one path, in some cases, it might make sense to go a different path. That's one of the issues that I talk about with my clients. Which is the least financially dangerous path for them to go down? I hope you found this video helpful. I appreciate it very much that you took the time to watch it. Feel free to visit my website, valencialawyer.com for lots more educational information about personal injury cases. Thank you. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hello everyone. This is Robert Mansour. I wanted to make a brief video today about all the different kinds of insurance adjusters you're going to be dealing with. Not personality wise, I'm talking about the different types of people that you're going to talk to, the different jobs that they have. The first person that you call at the insurance company is generally an intake person. They're not really an insurance adjuster. You might think that they are, but they're not. They're just, they're to take the initial call and to make sure that the matter is routed to the appropriate individual. Then, there is somebody called a property damage adjuster. The property damage adjuster is the person who handles your property damage claim. That's all they do. They handle car rentals, fixing of cars, totaling a vehicle if it's a total loss. Sometimes frankly, the property damage department will have two separate components, people who handle only total losses and people who handle repairs. Then, there is the adjuster who comes out, the field adjuster, who comes out and he'll takes a look at your car and examines it, and gives you an idea of whether this is something they can repair, roughly how much it would cost, et cetera. If you're making a case for injury, then the matter gets transferred to somebody else. That person is called the bodily injury Adjuster. That person's job is all about claims for injury, you know, whether it's hospital bills, medical bills, physical therapy, all of that stuff. That's their job. Now, sometimes this people will be dealing with your attorney and not so much with you. You should still understand that there are different players in the game. Also, on a bodily injury claim, if the case is filed with a lawsuit (because you're unable to settle your claim) in many cases, the same adjuster will stay on the case. A lot of times, they will transfer it to yet another adjuster who is a litigation specialist. Those adjusters work with the attorneys, the defense attorneys for the insurance company, as well as your lawyer, et cetera. You'll see that you might think that there's just one person at the insurance company who's going to handle everything. What usually happens is, there's many different people you're going to run into, and each of them has a special task or a special job; from the bodily injury tester to the property damage adjuster, to the person you speak to the very first time you call. Then sometimes, some of the insurance companies will hire an investigator to come and take a statement in the "field" as they say. They'll come and take a recorded statement of you sometimes in person, sometimes over the phone. That might be yet another individual that you have to deal with. Please understand, they're not passing the buck. They just all have different jobs to do. My name again is Robert Mansour. I hope you found this video helpful. Thanks for watching. |
Attorney Robert MansourRobert Mansour is an attorney in Santa Clarita, California who has been practicing law since 1993. After working for 13 years for the insurance companies, he now counsels victims of personal injury. Click here to learn more about Robert Mansour. Categories
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