In previous posts, we have discussed bodily injury and uninsured/underinsured insurance coverage on your car. While there are other options that may be available with different insurance companies, the one other type of insurance I would like to discuss is called medical payments coverage.

Colorado law requires all insurers to offer medical payments coverage to you in a mandatory minimum amount of $5,000. So what does it do? If you are involved in a collision, medical payments coverage does exactly what it sounds like. It is money that is designated specifically for payment of medical bills resulting from the crash.

In general one of the things that makes this type of coverage a significant benefit is a relatively low cost. The down side is that while this coverage provides help with medical bills, $5,000 does not go very far in the health care system. It is not unusual for costs to easily reach that amount just with an ambulance ride to the hospital and the emergency room visit itself. If you need medical care beyond the emergency room visit, medical costs still have to be paid.

People always come to me and say that they shouldn’t have to pay for their medical bills because it wasn’t their fault. While this is true, most people don”t realize that the person responsible for your injuries doesn’t have to compensate you for your injuries until you have completed your treatment and are ready to settle for all of your damages at once.

This can create great difficulty for people who don”t have decent health insurance, or worse, no insurance at all. In either case you can end up paying large amounts of money out of your own pocket and not get that money back for months, maybe more than a year. Medical payments coverage can significantly help this problem, but you should always carry more than the minimum $5,000 amount required by law. We would generally suggest that you should carry no less than $25,000 in medical payments coverage. But even if you don”t think you can afford that much coverage, under no circumstances should you waive medical payments coverage as is allowed under the law. As I’ve pointed out it is an inexpensive way to protect yourself and your family and how could that be a bad thing.

If you’ve been injured in an accident, call us for a free initial consultation at 719-633-6620.