What would you do?

The day after Christmas I was in an accident. Hit another car. My little cousin was with me. She started complaining of back pains. She went to the doctor.. diagnosis was muscle spasms.

Since PA is a no fault state for injuries, the insurance of the auto policy in the house she lives in covers her medical payments. Apparently her mother (my uncle's ex-wife) went through her medical insurance instead of auto policy to cover the bills. I was informed they are sending me the bills the insurance doesn't pay. Just co-pays apparently.

I'm a bit annoyed they want me to pay because they didn't use the proper insurance to cover bills and they now have out of pocket expenses.

I did everything I was supposed to do in regards to my insurance. Legally, I'm not responsible for any of her bills. But I guess you could look at it from a moral standpoint.. would you pay the bills?

Also consider (not that it matters much from a moral standpoint), I just started a job at the beginning of Nov after being unemployed 6 months. Her mother is an executive director at a nursing home and her father is an equine veterinarian. In other words, neither parent is hurting for money.

My take is this.. I'm not in control of the state laws. I pay insurance to cover things like this. It's your responsibility to find out the correct procedures. I'm not a confrontational guy at all, but I'm very tempted to just go ahead and tell them to eff off.

 

Its not a moral issue. If they made a mistake in what they were supposed to do to get their bills paid then its their problem not yours.

 

I agree.

Just make sure it doesn't back fire on you. Not to play devil's advocate here, but should they know what they're doing and actually allow you to pay less going this route then you might want to consider asking someone else about PA's policy before saying anything to them. I'd hate for you to be wrong and ending up paying more down the road.

 

This has all been verified by State Farm.

 

Agreed, they're appealing to your moral side because it's family and it sounds like the accident was your fault. That doesn't give them the right to stiff you with medical bills come about because they failed to bill things correctly. That's just a crappy thing to do, stick you with bills on top of guilt and knowing you're coming off unemployment. You should do your homework on the PA laws like w8n4mud mentioned to make sure you're in the right before you start a fight like that amongst family.

Moral and legal issues aside, family is tough to deal with. I don't know you or your family obviously but you could end up starting a family feud with stuff like this. Just something else to think about...

 

Not worried about that. Like I said, this is my uncle's ex-wife. And my uncle has pretty much pissed the rest of the family off. Everyone likes me a hell of a lot more than him.

 

I say you're good to go then. Do they know they billed it incorrectly, creating more bills? Sounds like they're being spiteful and you should go against it. You're correct, you have insurance for a reason, not to pay out of pocket because someone is too ignorant or incompetent to be bothered to bill things correctly.

 

How much are the copays?

 

That I don't know. They asked me for my insurance information and claim number which I gave (and this was before I knew PA was no fault). Don't know why they ended up going through there medical insurance.

 

Don't know. They just said they would be mailing them to me. Haven't received them yet. Doubt it will be much at all.

 

If it's like 20-40 I would pay them. Anything more I would say no. Any idea on how many copays there will be to pay? Maybe ask her. Because if she is going to a chiropractor once a week for 6 months that adds up quick.

 

Don't have any idea how many.

Still don't think I care. The whole situation was handled poorly on there side. Her mother never contacted me directly. Any time she needed information she got one of her daughters to send me a text. That's how I got the information that she was going to send me bills. That really rubbed me the wrong way.