You’ve been injured in a car accident through no fault of your own. You went through treatment for over a year, saw many different doctors and received a few imaging scans and tests along the way. You still have problems of neck and back pain, but you’re as good as you’re ever going to get.
All of your doctors state that your injuries were caused by the car accident, and that your treatment (which now has totalled more than $15,000 over 18 months) is reasonable and necessary.
You expect the other driver’s insurance company to at least pay for your medical bills. Afterall, your own doctors state that the treatment was 100% related to the accident.
You have a slam dunk case, right?
Not quite.
More and more insurance carriers are hiring doctors to dispute the claimant’s medical treatment. These doctors often perform as many as 200-400 exams on other doctors’ patients every year.
The insurance industry refers to them as “Independent Medical Exams,” or IME’s. But most of the time they are anything but “independent.” The doctors who typically perform these exams give medical opinions that only beneft the insurance company.
The carriers use these so-called ”medical opinions” to fight the claim, and dispute the opinions held by the claimant’s own healthcare providers.
I know of one Seattle neurologist who has been performing Insurance Company Exams (ICE’s) for nearly 18 years and by his own admission has earned more than $4 Million testifying against claimants.
In neck and back injury cases, the standard ICE opinion is that all neck and back injury strain/sprain injuries heal within 3 to 6 months. Never mind that this opinion radically differs from the experience of many people who have struggled with these injuries for years following a car accident.
You might think a jury would tend to disbelieve an ICE doctor in trial. But here’s the kicker: the jury is not allowed to know that the defense doctor was bought and paid for by the at-fault driver’s insurance company.
Why?
Because whether the defendant is insured or has insurance is always inadmissible at trial. That’s the law in Washington, and in most other states.
So even when the ICE doctor has been on the insurance company’s payroll for years, the jury will never know. The jury will also have no clue that the ICE doctor’s opinion is the same opinion that the doctor has given in hundreds if not thousands of similar cases in the past, regardless of the identity of the claimant.
This is why I tell clients that the deck can be stacked against them – even in a so-called slam dunk case. Especially now when the economy is so bad. More and more carriers are aggressively trying to save money by going to unusual lengths to fight legitimate claims. Those claims where an innocent person was severely injured through no fault of her own.
If you’ve been injured and the treatment lasts longer than a few weeks or months, or if the injuries may appear long-lasting or permanent, you really should seek out professional advice so you protect your rights and remedies against the at-fault insurance company.
Don’t take chances with your case by going it alone. A mistake could literally cost you tens of thousands of dollars in settlement proceeds that might otherwise have been paid had the claim been properly managed, worked up, and then negotiated by a seasoned professional on your behalf.
Related posts:
- How the insurance industry shortchanges accident victims to earn billions more in profits
- Parents Beware: You Can Be Held Responsible for Your Child’s Car Accident l Seattle Injury Lawyer
- Different Types of Injury Claims in the Field of Personal Injury Law l Seattle Accident Lawyer
- Back Surgery After a Car Accident