One more post about the accident from last January (not to be confused with the accident from last May, or the bumper-tap a couple of months ago). The settlement is finally done.
One of the first things that people say after you’ve been in an accident (aside from Are you okay? and Shouldn’t someone call an ambulance?) is something like Well, woo-hoo, boy, you gonna be rich now, ain’t you boy?!? Unfortunately, being critically injured and receiving a settlement differ from winning the lottery.
I was rather baffled by the response of apparently intelligent people who asked me how things were coming during this process. In short, my answer was “there’s some insurance money; we’re negotiating with Blue Cross about it because my medical bills exceeded the amount of money there was.” The response always was:
“Well, you’ve got to get a lawyer, son. Don’t let ’em screw you over!”
“I have a lawyer. The issue is – there’s only so much insurance money there.”
“Tell ’em you’re going to sue the guy who hit you.”
“His assets are probably less than the insurance money, and suing someone would take 2 years and 40-60% of what’s there.”
“Yeah, well, these insurance companies are rich. They can pay you more…”
“They’re going to pay (at most) the limits of the policy. That’s their only obligation.”
And then after we did a few laps on that, generally the topic would turn to “What’s this about Blue Cross trying to take your money? That ain’t right!”
“Well, I agree, but they have a contractual right to recover what they spent on my medical care, if the funds were there. If I got hit by a Coke truck and there was a lot of money for a settlement, you could understand that they should get their money back.”
“Well, yeah, but you just said there wasn’t that much money…”
“That’s why I have an attorney working on getting them to waive their right to subrogation.”
I shouldn’t have hired an attorney. I should have hired the people I talked to. If their ability to wear an insurance company down was half as good as their ability to wear me down in these discussions, I’d have had it done months ago. Which brings me to the biggest sad realization…
This stuff takes forever. The facts surrounding the accident were never in dispute, but it took months to get the liability insurance companies (his coverage, and my underinsured coverage) to tender their offers. Then it took four-five months to negotiate with Blue Cross (my attorney finally got them down to a token amount).
In talking to people who have never been in a situation like this, I was amazed at the sense of entitlement everyone has. I think most people have bought into two myths – insurance companies have some unlimited obligation to make you whole, whatever it takes (they’re called policy limits for a reason), and personal injury lawyers can fix everything.
Both myths seem to be fueled by the barrage of TV commercials we see on both of these topics. That’s kind of another story, but it is strange how unshakable these convictions are. It seems it’s human nature to be the most certain of what we know the least about. Many people I talked to just knew there was something I was missing, if I would only be more aggressive about it.
But if there’s a takeaway from this, it is two contradictory feelings about the insurance industry. One, I don’t trust ’em (especially the other guy’s, and especially the medical insurance industry), but two – I’m buying a lot more of it these days. I now have a million in liability and un/underinsured coverage. So I’m paying for my liability and the other guys, but if, God forbid, anything like this ever happens again, I want to be at the mercy of as few insurance companies at possible.
As I post this (I actually wrote it a couple of weeks ago, but I wanted to wait until it was ALL settled), I’m on vacation with my family, and feeling extremely blessed to be walking around with them. That’s the important thing, but I’ll admit that waking up every morning wondering when the financial issues would be settled wore on my soul. There’s always an issue in one’s life, always a challenge, but this was a bad one. I’m glad this aspect of it is over.