Hi, I’m Matthew Mobilio founder of Mobilio Law.  In this video I am going to talk about a little known reason why your personal injury settlement may end up being a lot less than you had hoped for.

As you know, from your injury settlement you will have to pay your lawyer as well as any out of pocket medical expenses that you incurred from the date of injury.  What you might not know is that any medical bills that were paid by any form of health insurance including medicare, Medicaid and any private or employer based plans will likely have a lien associated with those payments.  A lien in this situation is a legal right by the health insurance provider to go after any injury settlement funds in order to reimburse itself for payments made for medical expenses paid.

For example, let us say you are involved in a motor vehicle accident and suffer a broken leg.  You receive 6 months of treatment and your private health insurance pays $20,000 toward that treatment.  You make a claim against the other driver for negligence and settle that claim for $50,000.00.   Your health insurance provider may require that you reimburse it the full $20,000.00 that it paid in benefits, leaving you with a much smaller settlement than you expected.

Many times however an aggressive attorney can negotiate those liens down to a lesser amount using certain time-tested strategies such as downplaying the likelihood of you winning your case at trial and/or advising that the settlement funds were offered in part for future medical treatment.   Unfortunately, some health care providers will simply refuse to reduce their lien.  In those instances it is imperative that your attorney use that as leverage against the party that caused the injury to increase their settlement offer.

If you have questions about a healthcare lien contact me today for a free no obligation case evaluation.