Using Your Medical Payments Coverage to Pay Your Bills

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hello, everybody. This is Robert Mansour, and I wanted to make a brief video today about the issue of medical payments coverage. Medical payments coverage is something that a lot of people have under their insurance policy, and they're not even aware of it. Your auto insurance policy may have some coverage for you called "medical payments coverage," or MPC. What that means is, they basically serve as a health insurance company for you.

So, let's say you don't have health insurance. If you have medical payments coverage under your auto insurance policy, they might be able to pay for your health care coverage, or your health care needs after an auto accident. Now, it's important to know what the limits are of your Medical payments coverage.

So for example, you might have $2,000 available to you, or $5,000 available to you. You need to make sure number one that you have it available; and number two, you need to know what the limits are. In some cases, I have seen clients with $25,000 of medical payments coverage available to them. And the nice thing about this is that you can get your health care providers paid more quickly. Some of the health care providers don't understand personal injury cases, and they don't want to work on a lien, for example.

They don't want to defer their payment for later on in a case. They want to get paid now. And if you don't have health care insurance, it might be good to use your medical payments coverage. In some cases, the medical payments coverage will only pay after you've exhausted your health care coverage. So, if you use your health care coverage first and then you have some money left over that you have to get paid, some bills, you can use your medical payments coverage at that point. The other thing is that they may want you to exhaust your health care coverage first, your health care coverage options; or at least demonstrate that you don't have health care, before the medical payments coverage kicks in.

In many cases, and I would say in most cases, the insurance company has a right to reimbursement of their medical payments. So, let's say you recover money from the party at fault. You probably have to repay your insurance company for the medical payments they advanced on your behalf. So, it's not necessarily a freebie. So, let's say your insurance company pays $5,000 to the doctors on your behalf, under your Medical payments coverage. If you recover money from the other party, let's say you recover $10,000, you have to repay your insurance company for the Medical payments coverage that they extended for you.

Now, that is, in most cases, a contractual obligation that many clients aren't even aware of. So, make sure you talk to your lawyer about your medical payments coverage, whether or not it's even going to be available for you. And also make sure you discuss the right of reimbursement that most insurance companies have, when it comes to the medical payments coverage provision. If you don't have medical payments coverage, talk to your insurance professional and see if it will be appropriate for you. In most cases, it's not very expensive and it can be very helpful if you have a personal injury case. Thank you very much for watching this video. I hope you found it helpful.

If you need help with your accident matter, please call my office to learn more and see if we can help you with your personal injury auto accident case.  Call (661) 414-7100.  Also, visit our Videos page for more educational videos you may find helpful.