Fighting Back: How Much Can Lawyers Reduce Medical Bills?

Healthcare costs have been increasing in America for decades. About 52% have found their medical bills stressful over the last six months. 92% of them say that the stress has impacted their mental and physical well-being.

Luckily, an attorney can help you recover funds to pay these high bills after you make a personal injury claim. But exactly how much can lawyers reduce medical bills?

Read on to answer this question and learn how you can recover fair compensation after an injury.

How Much Can Lawyers Reduce Medical Bills?

Lawyers can help you reach a settlement with an at-fault party that gives you due compensation after an injury. In this way, they can help to decrease the burden on you by getting payment for your medical bills. They cannot ask the hospital to lower your bills, but they can help you recover the funds you need to pay for your visit(s).

Unfortunately, it’s challenging to give an estimate for personal injury settlement amounts. The sum will depend on a wide range of factors, the primary being how the injury was sustained. The payout for an auto accident case will be different from that of a workplace slip-and-fall claim.

Additionally, the extent of your injuries will impact any personal injury settlement. Those who sustain debilitating injuries that cause temporary or permanent disability will get more than people with less severe injuries. This is because the cost of medical treatment is higher, so you can recover compensation for higher medical bills.

Ballpark Estimates

Despite the underwhelming “it depends” answer to how much an attorney can recover to pay for your medical bills, there are some broad figures to keep in mind.

Legal encyclopedia NOLO conducted a study among their readers and learned that 70% of those with a tort claim received an award. Note that this figure assesses people who worked with a wide range of legal firms. You can increase your chances of winning with Sweet Lawyer’s 98% success rate.

About half of these people got settlements ranging from $3000 to $25,000. However, 26% of them got more than $25,000, so the cost is highly variable. All things considered, this survey determined that the overall average of almost $53,000.

When you work with a good lawyer, though, these settlement amounts can increase drastically. We have gotten clients $250,000-400,000 in compensation in the past after standard car accidents. In one instance involving an at-fault party serving alcohol to a minor, we were able to settle for a million dollars.

Factors Impacting a Personal Injury Settlement

The cost of treatment and the extent of injuries are two primary considerations when determining compensation after an injury. However, they’re far from the only thing to consider.

Future costs and expenses that the injury made necessary will also impact how much money you get. While some people may only need to pay a couple of isolated medical bills for healing, others will require more extensive treatment. This may include:

• Physical therapy
• Psychological trauma therapy
• Home care
• Inpatient treatment
• Frequent hospital visits
• Surgical expenses
• Medical devices
• Mobility aids

A lawyer may be able to reduce medical bills in the long term if you need care for a longer timeframe.

Temporary and permanent disability mean that your attorney may be able to reduce your medical bills even more. If you lost your quality of life because of immobility, disfiguration, or pain, you may be entitled to more compensation.

Pain and suffering also may be able to increase your settlement amount. If you were hurt after an accident and it was avoidable, the at-fault party may need to pay you compensation for both physical anguish and psychological suffering. This will depend on your specific case, and only an experienced attorney can tell you what you’re eligible for.

Loss of Income and Earning Potential

Many people involved in serious accidents are out of work for a while. If you can’t go into your workplace and conduct business as usual, you won’t be paid for the time you’re forced to take off. This can place a huge burden on the individual and their family because of undue financial strain.

In addition to obtaining payment for your medical bills, a quality lawyer may be able to help you recover funds for the time you missed at work. If you can’t go back to work in the long term, you may be able to get compensation for having lost earning potential.

This ensures that you can pay your medical bills and get back on your feet regardless of other settlement outcomes.

Fault

Arizona, Washington, California, and Colorado are all comparative negligence states. This means that it’s unlikely that one party will be 100% at fault for an accident. Fault will be distributed by percentages.

For example, consider a slip-and-fall case in which someone slips on another person’s property. If there were no posted signs and the owner did not rope off the wet area, the property owner would likely be more at fault. However, the injured party may also bear some of the blame because they didn’t notice visible water.

The distribution of blame here may be 80% on the owner and 20% on the plaintiff.

In another scenario where the property owner failed to clean up the mess but did post a sign, they will likely be less at fault for the slip-and-fall incident. They may bear 60% of the fault while the injured person bears a full 40%.

The plaintiff will win the settlement and recover some damages in both cases. However, comparative negligence states require the at-fault party to pay based on their assigned fault percentage. This means that the plaintiff in the first scenario can recover more money to pay medical bills than they would in the second situation.

Strength of Evidence

An attorney can help you reduce your medical bills more if there’s strong evidence that the other party bears more fault than you do. The aim of a quality lawyer is to gather evidence after the accident that left you injured. Some critical evidence may include:

• Photos of your injuries and related property damage
• Pictures of the accident site
• Security footage, if available
• Eyewitness testimonies
• Immediate accounts of the accident (including police reports)
• Assessments of the property owners and the space
• Reconstruction of the incident at the scene of the accident

Your attorney will look into finding this evidence, compiling it, and creating a case that utilizes it in a strong and compelling way.

It’s also important that you don’t do anything to compromise the evidence that your lawyer gathers. Of course, you would never compromise your own case on purpose, but posting about the accident on social media is a common mistake that can cost you a lot of money. Even a simple “it happened but I’m okay” can be used against you – after all, you said you were okay!

Don’t speak publicly about the case or put anything in writing. It can easily be used against you by an opposing insurance company, even if you didn’t mean anything by it. Your attorney can help you determine whether any actions you take could harm your case.

Attorney Quality

Regardless of how strong your case is, you won’t be able to reduce medical bills much if you have a low-quality attorney. You need someone who knows the ins and outs of personal injury cases in Tucson Arizona (or your local area). It’s critical that you have an experienced lawyer work on your case.

Members of our team don’t just have decades of experience. They also have a wide range of honors, awards, and accolades. You know that you’ll get the best possible representation based on past evidence and results.

More experience means that they will likely have talked with the companies and agents they’re negotiating with in the past. They’ll know how to reach a favorable settlement since they’ll know all of the tricks that insurance agents use to try and lowball you.

It’s also important that you and your attorney work well together. You need to ensure that your personalities mesh well enough that you can collaborate on a case openly and transparently. Attorneys serve to communicate with you about your case as they recover compensation, so you need to hire someone you’re comfortable talking to.

It’s also critical that your lawyer is comfortable with all of the steps of the settlement process. They need to be able to gather evidence and negotiate with insurance companies. They also need to be able to take your case to court if necessary.

Get a Free Case Evaluation

So, how much can lawyers reduce medical bills?

The answer is that it depends on a wide range of factors. However, you can increase your chances of paying your medical bills in full when you work with an experienced and reputable attorney.

At Sweet Lawyers, we’re committed to gathering evidence tirelessly and using it to build a strong case for you. Our team is excited to advocate for you in court and reach the highest possible settlement. Contact us to tell us about your specific situation and learn how we can help.