Insurance Archives - Page 6 of 6 - CHERIN LAW FIRM, PLLC

Are you saving the person money or the insurance company money?

January 24, 2017 Andrew Cherin Car Accidents, Insurance

When you get in a car accident and someone else is at fault, you may have a lot of questions about why you should not make a claim for personal injury damages. However, the answer to most of those questions and assumptions about who is actually going to pay for your bills is surprising to many. Who is actually saving money by not going through the other person’s insurance after a car accident or not making a claim for personal injury damages? Hint, it is a billion dollar industry and not an average person.

Why do so many people believe that it is better to not make a claim or to just accept cash from a person that causes a car accident to pay for only the repair damages? It may be due to cleaver advertising and news reporting by insurance companies and their agendas. Insurance is great, don’t get me wrong. However, the reason why many people are not making claims is based upon wrong assumptions.

Many people use the following excuses as why they don’t want to hire a Seattle personal injury lawyer to represent them in their car accident injury case or why they don’t even make a claim against the insurance company:

1. They don’t want to cost the person that caused the car accident more money. This could not be further from reality. When making a claim for personal injury or car repair following a car accident, the person that caused the car accident will not pay a dime because they have insurance. If there rates go up, it is rightfully because they are a bad driver and they will only go up a couple hundred dollars a year compared to the thousands of dollars the insurance company probably owes you.

2. They are not that injured and don’t want to be greedy. This mostly stems from the false idea that the other person will have to pay more money or the idea that they don’t want to be like the McDonald’s lady who sued for a million dollars because of spilt coffee. However, not many people know that the person that sued for a million dollars had severe burns that required her to get a skin graph of her nether region. That was not something anyone would want to go through but some how the media and the insurance companies have made everyone think this was just warm coffee that caused irritation? Moreover, your health is really all you have in this life so to say it is not worth anything is ridiculous. Would you rather go to the chiropractor now to get your spine in alignment and get compensated for your injuries or rather have arthritis and require back surgery because of uncorrected spine alignment in the future without getting it paid for or any compensation?

3. They don’t know what their case is worth. Many people don’t make a claim because they don’t know their case is worth medical bills being paid, lost wages compensated for, and pain and suffering. Your car accident injury case could be worth $10,000 or more.

Is it too late to start going to a chiropractor for your car accident injury case?

January 9, 2017 Andrew Cherin Car Accidents, Insurance

After a couple months without treatment, insurance companies will start to deny injury relatedness to a car accident injury case. How long do car accident victims have to start treatment following a car accident?

Insurance companies will start to deny your claim if you take too long to seek physical therapy, chiropractic care, massage therapy, or other treatment for your back and neck injuries suffered in the car accident. What is too long? This is tailored to each individual case and could be as little as three months without treatment or five months without treatment. Most soft tissue or spinal misalignment injuries should heal within 4 to 8 months according to most insurance companies so any start date following this time period may make it much less likely that you can recover anything in the car accident from insurance companies.

Insurance companies would like you to start treatment for your injuries following a car accident injury case immediately following a car accident because it makes it more likely than not related to the car accident. However, when there is a large gap in treatment or start of treatment following a car accident injury, it makes it less clear where the injuries actually came from. The reason for this is that there are a lot of unknown activities that could come into play to cause an injury that is similar to the one in the car accident. Well, at least that is the argument they will make.

As a Seattle personal injury lawyer, I see a lot of car accident injury victims get wrong or inaccurate advice from ER doctors that implant ideas into their head about the actual course of treatment they probably need after a car accident. ER doctors are very good at their job and see very severe injuries all the time. However, they become numb sometimes to less severe injuries like spinal misalignment or soft tissue injuries that really do require chiropractic care to create better alignment of the spine and return victims to full range of motion and health in their neck and spine. Therefore, it is not uncommon to see ER doctors tell patients that they should be fine or back to normal within one month or two following a car accident. This could not be further from the truth and could be mal practice. The good advice is to follow up with your primary doctor following a car accident to get x-rays, MRI, and more tailored advice to treatment of your neck and back injuries rather than take medication and sit around doing nothing for two months.

For these reasons, it is always good to check in with your primary doctor following a car accident injury case and call a Seattle personal injury lawyer to make sure you are doing everything right and that you can pay for your medical treatment while you are awaiting a settlement from the third party insurance company of the person that caused the car accident and your injuries.

Hit and Run Cases and UIM Insurance

December 29, 2016 Andrew Cherin Car Accidents, Insurance

People that are injured in hit and run car accidents have a lot of rights if they have the insurance. Hit and run car accidents are illegal and some times there are ways to track down these defendants but more often then not they get away. If you do not have UIM insurance, uninsured or underinsured insurance, you may be out of luck.

Uninsured or underinsured motorist insurance is an automobile insurance policy that steps into the shoes of the defendant and compensates you for pain and suffering, medical bills, lost wages, and more. The policy is very inexpensive but provides a world of relief when you are hit by someone with little or no insurance.

Some statistics show that around 20% of people on the road today have no insurance and most people on the road have the bare minimum insurance. This means that the likelihood of being hit by someone with little or no insurance is probably around 50/50 so why not have UIM insurance which usually costs less than $10 per month for $250,000 worth of insurance – a great deal considering that collision coverage generally costs more than triple that to pay for the damage you cause to your own car. Isn’t your health and wellbeing worth more than the repair value of your car?

UIM insurance covers people injured in hit and run car accidents but they must follow certain things. If you have UIM insurance and are hit by a defendant that has fled the scene, your insurance policy may state that you must report the car accident to police within 48 hours of the collision or lose your rights to use the UIM insurance. Therefore, it is imperative to call a Seattle personal injury lawyer immediately following a car accident to make sure all of your rights are being preserved and you can maximize your rights and benefits.

Moreover, it is imperative to know that just because you have the UIM policy in place, you will want a Seattle car accident injury lawyer representing you in the case because the insurance company can and will use anything the defendant could have used as an argument against you for paying out any premiums. While you have the policy, the insurance company will fight hard to keep their money and offer you very little if they can to save money. They are a business and not your friend.

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