Vanity: Help with medical bills (from accident).

My daughter, who is 22 now, was in an auto accident last year. She flipped and totalled her car, and damaged her knee. All is ok, thank God.

She is on my auto insurance policy. She had health care through her employer. I let her handle all the contacts and coordinate her benefits.

Here is the situation. Auto insurance had $10k medical payments. They paid their obligation. Her healthcare insurance has a $2k deductible. The healthcare insurance tells her the auto insurance payments have no effect on the deductible, even though that $10k reduced what the healthcare insurance paid by $10k. That doesn't make sense to me?

Now, with the myriad of healthcare professionals involved, she's getting calls from collections companies, (conveniently located in India, or Mexico, so the callers are all but unintelligible.) She's also getting letters from lawyers.
She's now far enough into this I have no clue what I can do to help. Here is what I'd like to help her accomplish:

#1 - I want to be sure she's not being cheated by her healthcare insurance. If they never knew of the auto insurance medical, they'd have had to pay all but $2k anyway. Can the healthcare insurance do that? Ignore the auto insurance payments and still ding her for $2k? (If they can, in hindsight, I'd have never let the auto insurance pay).

#2 - How do we coordinate what she owes? With different collections and lawyers contacting her, I see a situation where she could pay $2k only to have someone else pop up claiming she owes $2k.

Thanks.

You need to sit down with a rep from the hospital and sort this all out and come to a settlement before the collection fees double or triple what she owes.

In the big scheme of things 2K does not seem like an insurmountable debt or something a 22 yr old cannot figure out how to pay. Hope she is back to normal very soon.

In the case of an automobile accident, the auto insurance pays first, as they did. This would not affect her deductible through her personal (employer group) health insurance; she would still pay that. It sounds like the insurance companies are handling it correctly. There are probably several doctors and/or service providers involved, so it would be a good idea to contact each one. Presumably the health insurance has paid something to those providers?

“This would not affect her deductible through her personal (employer group) health insurance; she would still pay that.”

That’s interesting. I don’t know all the numbers, so I’ll use hypotheticals. If the total of all medical bills is $50k, my daughter is liable for the deductible no matter what? So, in hindsight, I should have not turned the claim into the auto insurance? Turning the claim into the auto insurance affected our rates. If they pay $10k less, we pay less in premiums. As far as her health insurance, they don’t care if they pay $48k or $38k as long as my daughter pays $2k?

All very odd to me.

Yes, payments have been made. The way bills from a hospital are handled, it’s pretty overwhelming. There’s the hospital, then the professional fees from this guy, and that gal and supplies from here and there. It’s like taking your car in and getting a bill from the shop, then one from Toyota, then one from the spark plug company, then one from the wire manufacturer, etc.

The health insurance would see in the medical records that it was from an accident, and they would insist that a claim be filed with the auto carrier. I don’t think you can get around having the auto insurance involved. Yes, she is liable for the deductible, regardless. My son was in a very serious auto accident in late 2005, and I was still dealing with the bills (he was in the Marine Corps, and the bills came to our house, not his base) for about 15 months after the fact. The applicable car insurance paid first, $5,000, and then the rest of the bills went to Tricare, something along the line of $90,000.

“The applicable car insurance paid first, $5,000, and then the rest of the bills went to Tricare”

Another inequity. If we all have the same health insurance, and same deductible, but different auto insurances, we potentially are unequal in our coverage. That is, 3 of us have an accident resulting in $100k in medical. We all owe $2k deductible. Your auto insurance pays $5k, mine pays $10k, and the other person has auto that pays $20k.
Understand, I’m not arguing with you, just commenting on the odd construction of the system.
It seems to me there is no incentive to pay the extra to the auto insurance companies to have the higher medical coverage, as long as you have health insurance.

I see everybody here saying that she pays the deductible regardless, however that did not happen when Mr G had a car accident.

Our car insurance covered the deductible plus some, and we never paid a penny. I guess you should talk to both the insurance companies to find out the scoop.

“Our car insurance covered the deductible plus some, and we never paid a penny. I guess you should talk to both the insurance companies to find out the scoop.”

She just talked to me before she left for school today. She said the auto insurance paid first, and that they stated the $10k should go to pay the deductible. But, now that the auto insurance has paid, they are out of the loop. They’ve handled their obligation, and don’t want to hear any more about it.
The health insurance says that the deductible stands, regardless of what the auto insurance company says.

Random thoughts:

1. Many Health Care Plans only pay a portion of the medical bills, even after the deductible.

2. Many Health Care Plans pay LESS than the bill requires, either as a matter of course(or policy) or by “negotiating down” the full bill.

3. For Profit medical businesses sometimes will bill (dun) a patient for any difference between their original (sometimes exorbitant) bill and the amount the Insurance Company paid.

( A little old lady I know [who’s total income was $500/month, from SS plus SSI] was dunned for the difference between what Medicare paid and the full bills. They didn’t bother to bill Medicaid, and knew full well that She could not afford to pay.)

4. You could read your daughter’s insurance policy to try to see what they have obligated themselves to do.

5. You could “google” the name of the company, and “complaints,” etc and maybe find out the reputation of that company and maybe ways people have tried to solve the problem.

6. You could look for one of the outfits who negotiate with Credit Card companies, preferably one with a good reputation and is a non-profit. They MIGHT be able to negotiate these issues for you, or tell you how you can do it.

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