Medical payments and bodily injury liability are two seperate coverages on your auto insurance policy. However, they can be misleading just on the name alone. Today we’ll help seperate the two and give some tips for what amount of medical payments coverage you may want to carry.
What is bodily injury liability?
Liability is the coverage you carry that is payable for injuries to others outside of your vehicle. If you collide with another vehicle, and the driver or any passengers in that vehicle sustain injuries, the liability portion of your policy will apply.
What does the medical payments portion cover?
Medical payments are payable to you and the passengers in your vehicle. This portion of your policy is very important and is sometimes over looked or purchased with too low of coverage. Since you cannot be held liable to yourself, the medical portion is in place to help cover your own injuries should you have them.
I have health insurance, why does this matter?
The other important thing to understand is that health insurance resets every calendar year. If you have an accident the last week of December, you’ll have to meet your deductible and out of pocket expenses. And if you need further treatment into January, you will immediately have to meet those same dollar amounts again. With higher medical payments coverage, you’ll have available money to assist in preventing personal financial strain during an already stressful time.
What amount of coverage is available?
Medical payments are typically sold in incriments of $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, $10,000 and $25,000. This protection is an inexpensive coverage on your policy. You may be looking at a very minimum amount of premium increase to jump from $5000 to $10,000. However, you’d instantly have double the coverage.
Take a moment today and compare your current medical payments coverage with your health insurance deductible and maximum out of pocket. If you feel you might want to bump that coverage up, give us a call and we can give you a quick quote.
