A woman who sued her 12-year-old nephew for $127,000 over injuries she received when he exuberantly greeted her at his birthday party four years ago was forced to go to court over her medical bills, her lawyers said Wednesday as backlash against her on social media sites poured in. ... Jainchill & Beckert, Connell's law firm, said her nephew's parents' insurance company offered her $1 over the fall, which occurred at their home. She had no choice but to sue to pay medical bills, they said, adding that she has had two surgeries and could face a third, her lawyers said.She doesn't have her own insurance?
The homeowner's insurance company made a bet that no jury would find an 8 year-old liable. The case probably went forward because her lawyers put in a lot of time and they wanted to get paid. I'll bet dollars to donuts that their retainer agreement said that if she pulled out of the case, that she'd have to pay them.
So maybe the lawyers are the one who should be incurring the Wrath of the Internet.
2 comments:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2015/10/maybe-if-we-had-single-payer-thered.html
EBM, check your health insurance contract. Somewhere deep in there, you will find that if your injury was caused by some other person's malfeasance and that other person has insurance that will cover your injury, your health insurance will pay zero, nada, zilch, bupkus. The other person's insurance is supposed to pay in that case.
Furthermore, health insurance is no guarantee of anything. In general even insured people end up paying around 33% of the costs of medical treatment out of pocket because the assholes won't pay what they're contracted to pay, instead giving you run-arounds like "out of network physician" yada yada.
The irony is that now that a court has determined that the child was *not* responsible for her injury, she can now file a claim with her health insurer because the "other person's malfeasance" thing doesn't apply anymore. So she didn't lose, assuming she's insured. Which is a big assumption, alas, because the first thing that health insurers did in the pre-Obamacare era was figure out some excuse to cancel your coverage if you looked like you'd actually use it...
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