How Pre-existing Conditions Can Affect an Injury Claim
Your medical records contain powerful weapons that can be used against you in an injury claim. Pre-existing conditions can be used by insurers and defendants as a way to diminish the amount of damages you receive in an injury claim due to a car accident.
Lawyer ethics require the zealous representation of a client’s interests. Your interests are to receive payment for your injuries. The defendant’s and their insurer’s attorneys seek to keep the amount paid out to as little as possible.
If, five years ago, you dislocated your right shoulder after falling off a bicycle, you likely sought medical treatment and missed some work. Having made a full recovery, in your mind the shoulder issue is all behind you. Now, five years later, you are involved in a car accident caused by another driver’s negligence. After being taken to the hospital, you are diagnosed with a severe shoulder injury. Surgery is required, and then extensive physical therapy and rehabilitation are needed.
Very soon thereafter, the insurance companies may contact you. One of the first questions they may ask is about that prior shoulder dislocation. This is because they want to argue that what happened was merely an aggravation of a pre-existing condition, in the hopes that they can offer a smaller settlement amount. What you deserve is a fair settlement in an amount properly addressing the extent of your injuries.
Insurance adjustors routinely comb through years of medical records to gather information to justify a lower payment. Insurance adjustors work for insurance companies, and a big part of their job is to find ways to reduce the amount of money paid on claims. They are going to look at your latest injury and look for evidence that the pain you are experiencing is due to the old injury, or that your recent accident merely aggravated an old injury. The science behind this is not really cut and dried, unfortunately. The type of injury, the area of the body involved, the severity of the accident, the reports of medical professionals, and how such reports can be interpreted all come into play.
Cases involving pre-existing conditions as an issue should be handled by a car accident lawyer. Individuals should not answer questions posed by an insurance adjustor without having an attorney present. Retaining an attorney who has experience in dealing with clients injured in a car accident, a car accident lawyer, if you will, is the best course of action. Furthermore, do not answer any questions when you are in pain and/or under the influence of pain medications.
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This is yet another aspect of the shameful private, for-profit health care “system” that working people in the U.S. are burdened with thans to a CONgress that has completely turned its back on the people it purports to represent in order to serve the interests of greedy blood suckers who feed on death.
Even CHINA – that repressive, dysfunctional, totalitarian society – is implementing guaranteed medical care for its citizens.
The U.S. health care “system” murders 45,000 people a year by denying treatment for no other reason than inability to pay – and of course, “pre-existing conditions.”
Where is the outrage? Where is the shame? This is an embarrassment before the entire world. I( have friends in Europe and Canada who look at our system with pity and disgust, wondering how our society can treat people this way.
Here’s an irony – the “tort reformers” are almost invariably the came people who are against universal, guaranteed health care for all citizens. However, if we simply had such a system – such as Medicare for All – one major reason for injury litigation would disappear.