“If my medical bills were paid by insurance, do I have to pay back the insurance company from my personal injury settlement?”
There is no short answer to this question. When someone is injured in an accident, they need immediate medical trereatment. There is no time to wait for a personal injury case settlement which coulkd take years. Medical providers like to be paid for their services rendered. So in almost all accident cases, there is some insurance entity paying the bills for medical treatment. The question really is, will that entity that paid for medical treatment have to be repaid for those medical billls it paid?
Generally, for car accident cases, there would be no lien (but there are certain cases where you do have to pay back medical bills paid by insurance).
For many claims involving innuries on the job, the Worker’s Compensation Carrier who paid the bills would have to be repaid. The amount of that lien would be reduced by proportional amount of legal fee and disbursements. (This would mean the reduction of the lien would be at least one-third of the total lien. (But there are certain types of Worker’s Compensation liens could be waived entirely, but that depends on the type of accident.)
For those accidents covered by Medicare, there is a lien and Medicare would have to be repaid for medical bills covered. But, just like Worker’s Compensation Carriers, Medicare will reduce its lien based on the amount of legal fee and disbursments.
For many other cases, there is no lien. It is difficult to understand the lien reductions without specific facts. But the best answer to the original question would be that there could be a medical lien reduction or waiver, but it really depends on the specific facts of your case.
