Health insurance companies, disability insurance companies find ways to seek reimbursement from your personal injury settlement in your personal injury case. This applies to all accident and injury cases including motor vehicle cases, fall down cases, medical malpractice, workers compensation and products liability cases.
You should be aware that if your medical bills or wage benefits were paid by health insurance, disability insurance or an employer’s health plan, the insurance company or plan may want you to reimburse it out of any personal injury recovery. Your insurance policy typically has a clause that can allow for the insurance company to hire lawyers to make the claims for reimbursement or “subrogation.” It is usually controlled by the insurance policy or by a federal law called ERISA (The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974). Your attorney must understand the implications of ERISA on your case because sometimes your insurance company wants and can try to get the entire settlement or verdict. There are ways your attorney can protect your money. But your attorney had better be extremely familiar with ERISA.
We handle ERISA cases and know how to protect your settlement or verdict. There are certain things the insurance company must do and documents it must provide before it can validly claim reimbursement, of any money it paid on your behalf, from your settlement or verdict. Even if it turns out money has to be reimbursed to your insurance company, we can usually get your insurance company to agree to be a reduced amount.
For more than two decades, Pennsylvania personal injury attorney Stuart A. Carpey has worked tirelessly protecting the rights of people injured in accidents. He wrote this article so people know how to avoid reimbursing health insurance carriers when it is not needed. For more information and articles on how to protect your rights, visit Carpey Law.
