Hi. My name is Tim Rayne, and I’m a Pennsylvania personal injury attorney. Today’s legal tip answers the question: Why should I purchase more than the state required minimum medical coverage on my car insurance policy?

When you purchase car insurance, you choose the level of the medical coverage that you want to purchase. The state required minimum is $5,000, and a lot of people choose to stay just at the $5,000.

Now, if you’re involved in a car accident, regardless of who’s at fault for the accident, you might be surprised to learn that your own car insurance will pay your medical bills first. So your bills don’t get paid by the other car insurance if that driver caused the accident. The bills don’t get paid by your health insurance. They don’t get paid by Medicare. Instead, they get paid by your own car insurance first, up to the amount of your coverage.

Now, if you have the state required minimum $5,000, that’s what will happen. $5,000 will be paid by your own car insurance. Then if you have health insurance, it will go onto that, or Medicare, it’ll go onto that. Or if you don’t have health insurance or Medicare, you can sue the responsible driver for your excess medical bills.

The good news is that when you submit medical bills to your own car insurance policy, there’s no such thing as a deductible. There’s no such thing as a co-pay. Your medical bills are paid, and any excess amount that’s unpaid has to be written off by your health care provider in Pennsylvania.

Because of this, that’s why I suggest that you purchase more than the state required minimum $5,000 of medical bill coverage. I don’t know about you, but we’ve gone to a high deductible policy. A lot of insurance policies have significant co-pays. So if you’re looking at having your health insurance cover your medical bills from a car accident, you’re looking at a lot of personal contributions that you have to make.

On the other hand, if you’ve purchased significant medical insurance on your car insurance policy, again there’s no such thing as a co-pay, there’s no such thing as a deductible. So, if you’ve purchased $10,000 of medical coverage on your car insurance policy, up to $10,000 of medical bills will be paid by your car insurance and so on.

So that’s the reason why I recommend that you consider more than the state required minimum of $5,000 for medical bill coverage.

That’s our legal tip for today. Again, my name is Tim Rayne, and I’m a Pennsylvania personal injury attorney. If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me by phone or email. Thank you.