How The Subrogation Process Applies To Residents of Ontario?

If your car insurance policy includes liability coverage, and if you also have health insurance, then, in the event that you get into an accident, you could well take part in the subrogation process.

What is the subrogation process?

That is the series of events that takes place after someone with health insurance gets injured in a motor vehicle accident. Since all Canadians have government health insurance, any resident of Ontario could one day take part in the subrogation process.

How does the process work?

Once the health insurance company learns that a policy holder has been injured in an accident, it sends a letter to the injured accident victim. The letter represents an attempt to learn the answers to certain questions:

• Did the accident take place while you were at work?
• Was a 3rd party involved? If so, what is the name of the adjuster that is working for the 3rd party’s insurance company?
• Have you hired a Personal Injury Lawyer in Orillia?

The reason that specific questions get asked:

The provider of the health insurance covers the cost of the patient’s medical care, until such time as the victimized patient has received some form of compensation. That same provider has the right to seek reimbursement from the 3rd party’s insurance company for the money spent on the policy holder’s/ patient’s medical care.

How large a reimbursement can a health insurance company get?

Two factors determine the size of that reimbursement. One is the extent of the policy holder’s medical expenses, while being treated for the accident-caused injury. The influence of the second factor can vary, depending on the desires of the man or woman that has purchased the policy with health protection.

Sometimes that particular man or woman has hired an attorney. When that is the case, then the hired lawyer must be paid. The lawyer’s fee comes out of the money in the compensation package.

Yet the health insurance intends to extract its reimbursement from that same package. In other words, the removal of both the money for the health insurer and the money for the lawyer could reduce the plaintiff’s compensation package to a marked degree. Consequently, a smart victim/claimant elects to make a request.

That request is made to the health insurance company. What gets requested? It is a reduction in the size of the reimbursement, so that the lawyer’s fee does not cause a marked lowering of the amount of money in the compensation package.

There is no guarantee that the requested service will be performed. Still, no harm can come to the policy holder that does not hesitate to pose such a request, when communicating with the appropriate health insurance company.