Closure After 2+ Years!

It's President Day so Helen and the boys are out of school. We originally planned on signing the settlement agreement regarding Helen's car accident later in the week, but pushed it up to this morning when we remembered that Helen didn't have school today.

Helen was rear ended by a teenage girl during the final week of school before Christmas of 2004. That Christmas was not fun for any of us. Helen's upper back and neck were injured and she underwent months of treatment. In the Summer of 2005 she had injections into the facet joints of her upper back that finally gave her some relief. She continued to have periodic flare ups, but they gradually grew farther and farther apart. The at fault party's insurer would not cover any of the medical costs until we agreed that Helen was "all better".

It turns out that there's a grey area where many medical providers will not take health care insurance for auto accidents because the health care insurers often deny the claims because they think that the auto insurer should pay. The medical providers don't want to get caught in the middle so they refuse to make claims against health insurance for auto accidents. That meant that we covered the cost of Helen's medical treatment out of pocket for almost a year.

I couldn't believe that we were the only ones in this insurance Catch-22. I contacted newspapers, consumer advocates, and anyone that I thought that might help us. Finally, my state senator got involved and got me in touch with someone with the State Health Benefit Plan, Helen's health insurer.

Around Christmas of 2005 we contacted the at fault party's insurer and said that we were fairly certain that Helen was as good as she was going to get and that we were ready to settle. They dragged their feet and finally offered an amount that was less than our out of pocket medical expenses. Since we weren't sure if Helen's health insurer would ever reimburse us, we declined the offer.

We had been keeping good records and we had been educating ourselves on dealing with insurance companies for auto accidents. I put together a document that detailed the entire claim history and our settlement expectations. After a few months of negotiation it was evident that they were not going to come anywhere near our number, so we began the process of finding an attorney to represent us.

The good thing about the drawn out process was that Helen continued to improve or at least had not had any bad flareups. We were hesitant to declare her "all better" after hearing from numerous friends and acquaintances who had chronic trouble from an auto accident or thought they were better only to have complications later in life. So the longer Helen went without flareups the better we felt.

Eventually, we found a lawyer that we liked and began putting together a case. In the mean time, Helen's health insurer finally agreed to reimburse us for the majority of the medical expenses. Once we were reimbursed, Helen's zeal to fight waned, but I was determined and looked at the whole thing as a learning experience.

The lawyers spent most of 2006 going back and forth. There were depositions and other fun things. Fast forward to Christmas of 2006 when the court sent us to an arbitration prior to going to trial. After some back and forth we got the settlement up to an acceptable range. We finally agreed on a number a few weeks later and signed the papers today! So brings to an end the 2+ year saga. We're happy to put it all behind us and hopefully Helen won't have any future complications.