Treatment:
Life as we know it has come to an abrupt, but hopefully brief, pause. Most things seem to have slowed, been interrupted or come to a complete stop.
If you’re an injury client, just know that if stop seeing your treating physician, you case will also stall. To resolve an injury claim, attorneys need to know from your doctor your diagnoses and future prognoses. Docs cannot assess that when they have an absentee patient. And when it comes time to settle your claim, most insurance companies recognize and sometimes penalize claimants when there’s a big gap in treatment. “How injured could your client be if they took 6 weeks off from treatment?”
No lawyer would ever advise their client to do something that the client considers dangerous, like leaving home for treatments if they fear for their medical safety. But if you have any questions, why not contact your treating physician to see what safety measures they have to protect their patients from COVID-19 concerns? At this point almost all clinics have written policies to put patients’ concern’s at ease.
Car Insurance:
In times of economic uncertainty, people lose jobs. Sometimes people fear losing their job or income and sometimes people just start cutting back financially in anticipation of a downturn in the economy.
When this occurs, certain things can get overlooked or eliminated. For instance, car insurance. Car insurance doesn’t put food on the table or keep that roof over your head. But do not ever stop paying for car insurance so long as you have a car and some income. Many people do. This makes you, as a driver or passenger on the road, incredibly vulnerable when every other car on the road is uninsured.
Yes, you can insure yourself in case that other driver has no insurance, called “uninsured motorist protection” or UM, but since UM is the most waive-able insurance, many people do not have it. In these cases, if you’re on the road, negligently hit by someone else and injured, you are almost completely out of luck. Your medical bills may be covered up to $10,000, but if those injuries are permanent, the at-fault driver had no insurance and you didn’t properly protect yourself or your family with UM.
Always, always, always insure yourself to the best of your financial ability.
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