New Jersey is one of the few states in the country where medical bills incurred as a result of a car wreck are paid by the injured persons auto insurance, regardless of fault. However, the amount and percentage of the bill paid depends on the “type” of insurance that the injured person selected. There are many choices consumers must make when selecting their automobile insurance, especially the Personal Injury Protection (PIP) coverage which pays for the injured persons medical bills, loss of income and help they may need at home.
Problems arise when consumers opt for lower amounts of Personal Injury Protection (PIP) coverage for payment of their medical bills than the standard coverage amount of $250,000, or select health insurance to be their primary source of payment of their medical bills. Lower limits of PIP coverage rarely result in significant savings on your insurance premiums but often result in insufficient benefits being available to pay for medically necessary care. Selecting health insurance as primary to PIP coverage also rarely results in savings on the cost of your coverage and often results in your health insurer demanding repayment from you of monies they paid out for medical bills. In some cases, the health insurance policy does not even allow for the payment of auto accident related medical bills.
www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_consumers/insurance/pipoption.htm
More often than not, consumers don’t review the coverages set forth on the declarations pages of their auto insurance policy to see if they were provided with the coverages they actually selected. On occasion, the coverage’s provided do not match what they selected. Other times, the coverage is what they asked for but doesn’t provide them the benefits they thought it did. Usually, this is not realized until after they are involved in an auto accident and is often too late to fix. There have been many accounts of consumers not being offered the maximum amount of PIP coverage.
www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2012/08/20/260039.htm
For many years, Javerbaum Wurgaft partner Jeffrey A. Rizika has been educating consumers, medical providers and other attorneys throughout the state about the potential coverage issues that arise when a consumer opts for less than full PIP coverage for the payment of their auto accident related medical bills, as well as other issues that arise when someone is injured in a motor vehicle accident.
www.javerbaumwurgaft.com/jeffrey-a-rizika/
If you or a loved one have been injured in a motor vehicle accident, or have a question about your auto insurance coverage, please contact Jeffrey and the other lawyers in the personal injury department at Javerbaum, Wurgaft. We are here to help.
www.javerbaumwurgaft.com/personal-injury
