What Is PIP: Personal Injury Protection?

Hi everyone, this is Attorney Adam Smalo from the Law Offices of Adam M. Smalo in Maryland. And we’re here to talk a little bit about PIP. If you were just in a car accident and, uh, if you were injured and if you’ve had medical treatment or seeking medical treatment, You may have spoken to your insurance company or another insurance company and you may have heard the word PIP You have PIP. You may have PIP. What is PIP? So let me just tell you very simply and very clearly what PIP is and what you need to do. Going forward for that particular accident or in the future to make sure you have the best PIP available to you An event that you’re injured in the car accident. So PIP is called personal injury protection and it is what’s called first-party medical benefits in the event of a car crash and it doesn’t matter who’s at fault you could cause an accident the other person can cause the accident it hits you either way if you’re injured in a car accident and your insurance policy for the vehicle you’re driving or if you’re a passenger the insurance policy of the owner of that vehicle that you’re a passenger in, you may qualify for PIP, so personal and true protection. It is fairly common around the entire country, so we have 50 states and there are 50 different versions of PIP or first-party medical benefits. Some states are actually called PIP, others call it MedPay, it just depends on your state. Unfortunately in Maryland, we’re in one of these states with a lot of bad auto accident laws and PIP is one of the few states where it’s You wouldn’t even know it. When you sign up online for five seconds, if you don’t know about it, you’re probably waiting it. And it’s very inexpensive. And in Maryland, not only is it waiveable, there’s really two levels. There’s, you can purchase $2,500 or $5,000. And there’s some other insurance companies that do offer more, but there’s very few. Eerie, for example, insurance company. I have my family. We have $10,000 of pit benefits. But what the insurance companies want you to do is waive them because if you’re hurt in an accident, regardless of fault, they don’t have to pay anything. But if you are hurt, that $2,500 or $5,000 will cover all your medical expenses up to that threshold or up to 85% of your lost wages if you can’t work for a day, a week, or a month, or longer after a car accident and the medical providers have documented that for you. And that’s how you get PIP benefits. And so for example, there are other states like just north of us in Delaware where it’s $15,000, automatic when you get insurance, and other states that are $20 or $25,000. So is a small amount of money relative to other states, however, if you’re working with high quality medical providers, primary care doctors, hospitals, physical therapists, risks, it usually will pay them dollar for dollar. So it does assist in the short term with getting medical bills paid and getting some lost wages if you miss work. How does it work? How do you do it? Well, if you’re at fault for an accident, you’re injured, or you’re hit by somebody else and you choose not to get a lawyer, you have to simply fill in an application. In fact, many insurance companies are moving away from the formal application process with a wet signature and it’s been modernized. So it depends on the insurance company. If you have an attorney that’s representing you for injuries and a car accident that wasn’t your fault in Maryland, that attorney will take care of that for you and make sure that every dollar of those benefits are exhausted. Assuming you have more than that, some people, some of our clients, by the way, just go to the hospital or follow up. And their medical bills don’t reach that $2,500 or $5,000 or in some cases, $10,000 or more threshold if you’re protected enough. But the other aspect in Maryland that we have for first party medical benefits that not many people know about, if you don’t know about PIP, you certainly don’t know about med pay. And what med pay is, is it’s an additional source of medical, first party medical coverage in the event that you’re in your accident regardless of the fall. And med pay goes directly to hospital bills, there’s no lost wages involved in this. But not all insurance companies have it. I’ll give you another example, Erie, the Hartford, USA, for example, those are insurance companies that offer med-pay benefits, but not all insurance companies offer them. And certainly, those nasty day-to-day companies like Geico and Progressive, they don’t offer it surprisingly all state does. So it’s additional coverage that you have to talk to your insurance company about. And again, this coverage is really cheap relative to the benefit you get if you’re in an accident. Med pay, for example, with USAA, sometimes it can range anywhere. It can be an additional $2,500 or $5,000. USAA can get up to $100,000 in med pay if you select it and purchase it with your policy or call your insurance adjuster up today and say, say, hey, I want med pay or I want my maximum PIP. The last thing I just wanted to mention was if you’re in a vehicle and you’re in a car accident as a passenger and you’re injured and that vehicle does not have insurance coverage or doesn’t have PIP on the policy, you can actually get it through your own insurance policy or a blood relatives insurance policy at home. It’s either, you know, if you live at home and you have that at home in your policy or you live with a family member that has a blood relative, you can get PIP that way. That’s a debt factor way to get it. And also, if you’re under 16, PIP can’t be waived for children, and then certainly babies and toddlers under 16, and they will get PIP coverage if there’s insurance on the vehicle. So that’s how you protect yourself, your respect for a fall, your respect for all the other stuff that’s happened with your car accident. Get PIP, get med pay, talk to your insurance company, have them give you straight answers. And if you don’t get straight answers, You call the law offices of Adam M. Smallow at (410) 449-7900. You can text us hurt@nationalinjury.com. You can find us at MDAccidentLaw.com. And anyway, you do contact our law firm. An attorney would be more than happy to give you a complimentary insurance overview, not just PIP, but all the other elements. And I have videos out there on UM Insurance, UIM Insurance, being uninsured. Having the proper coverage, we can tell you about all of that and how best to protect you and your family for a relatively nominal cost. So please check us out on YouTube. We have a lot of information. We pull back the curtain on how auto-axon claims and how the auto industry works with Maryland. And if you have any comments at all, any stories about PIP benefits or how that was handled in an accident or case, we’d love to hear it down below. and we’ll talk to you real soon.