Medical Bills After a Settlement: What Your Lawyer Should Always Tell You

Video Transcript

If you’re wondering whether you have to pay back medical bills at the conclusion of a personal injury case, the answer is it depends. But very often yes, at least in some form. In some injury cases you might see some or all of your medical care get paid for through, for example, perhaps private health insurance, Medicare or Medicaid. Each of those payment sources comes with different repayment rules, and any treatment paid for through a federal government entity like Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, or the VA can get particularly tricky.

The basic rule of thumb is if your medical treatment was paid by health insurance or government program like Medicare, those entities may have a legal right under South Carolina law to be reimbursed from your recovery. This is very important to understand when you’re going to settle a personal injury case, because if you don’t pay back these entities through the proceeds from your settlement, you could run into big problems later. A bad personal injury lawyer might not ever tell you this, and they might settle your case without making you aware of these third party creditors and their rights to reimbursement.

A good personal injury lawyer, however, does not treat the case as finished after he or she gets you a settlement. They go the extra mile and they review the bills from your case in depth, identify what’s legally owed, and often try to negotiate so that you can keep as much of your recovery as possible. The important takeaway is this: medical bills shouldn’t come as a surprise at the end of the case. A competent lawyer should explain them upfront and walk you through exactly how they’re handled before any case is ever fully resolved.