What is PIP insurance (Personal Injury Protection)?
There's an insurance benefit you
may be paying for and you may need right now. How to know if you have it
and how to get it a car wreck can cause real financial trouble for you. If the
wreck wasn't your fault, you should be able to recover your losses from the bad
driver's insurance company. But
that takes a long time, how can you bridge the gap between now and then. When
you bought your auto insurance, you
may have purchased coverage called pip
Insurance. You don't even remember it pip stands for personal injury protection. Don't
worry, we're going to answer four basic personal injury protection PIP questions and you'll
practically be an expert.
1) What
Does Personal Injury Protection PIP Cover?
This is where we really answer the
question what is personal injury
protection? The main things that personal injury protection pip covers are medical bills and
lost income related to the wreck. If the medical bills are not related to the
wreck the insurance company doesn't have to pay them. If you miss time from
work after a wreck but, it's not because of the injury in the wreck the insurance company doesn't have to
pay that either but, of course if you have medical bills or have to miss work
right after a wreck it's usually because of the wreck now there are a few other
things that personal injury
protection (PIP) covers but they don't really come up all that
often a couple of other things that are important about what pip covers one is
that it doesn't matter whose fault the wreck was and the other is that personal injury protection PIP
usually covers losses up to 2,500 or $5,000.
2) How
Do You Know If You Have Personal Injury Protection PIP?
At a coverage first of all Texas
law says that the insurance
company must offer your personal injury protection coverage when they sell you auto
insurance policy. When you buy an auto insurance policy and where the auto insurance policy renews.
The insurance company gives
you something called a declarations page sometimes we call it a Dex page. This
is a sample declarations page from one of the major companies and, it basically
tells you what coverage’s you have and what vehicles are covered.
Different insurance companies will
have slightly different declarations pages but, they all have pretty much the
same information. The important thing, for now, is that somewhere on that page
it will say personal injury
protection and then it will usually say either $2,500 per person or
whatever amount you bought. It may say n/a or rejected. If your declarations
page looks like you didn't buy it. Don't give up yet tell your insurance company to provide a
copy of your written rejection of pip. If they don't have it then you have
$2,500 of personal injury
protection, if your insurance
company does have a copy of your written rejection you probably
don't have pip. We figured out whether you have personal injury protection PIP.
3) How
Do You Get The Insurance Company To Pay What They Owe?
How do you take advantage of this
event this benefit that you paid for the good news is it's usually pretty easy
first call your insurance company or
the agent who sold you the policy it's helpful. If you have your policy number
handy when you call just tell them, you need to file a personal injury protection pip
claim. Ask where to send the claim information they may have a form that they
want you to fill out. If go ahead and use that form and fill it out. Make sure
that you start this process as soon as you can after. Because some policies
have a deadline for notifying them of a wreck in order to get your pip
benefits. Once the insurance
company tells you where to send the information gather your doctor
bills, ambulance bills, prescription receipts, and anything else showing
medical bills sends them to wherever the insurance company told you to send them.
Also, get a pay stub from your
work that shows, how much you get paid and how much time you had to miss, send
that in too. It's not a bad idea to get a copy of the police report from the
wreck to prove that the wreck happened. The insurance company has 30 days to send you a check. They
usually don't give you much trouble. Also, you don't need to wait, until you
have all of your receipts and bills. Forth to send in what you have. You can
get your reimbursement money right away, when you have more documentation to
send in, send that in keep doing that, until either you've been reimbursed all
of your expenses and lost income or you hit the pip limit. Doesn’t worry about
going over your limit believe me the insurance company is keeping track and they will let when
you've hit your limit.
4) Will
Your Insurance Rates Go Up Because You Made A Pip Claim?
Your insurance rates go up.
Because you make a pip claim the short answer is “NO”. The longer answer is
that your rates may go up because of the wreck. But they won't go up, because
of the personal injury protection PIP
claim. Don't hide the wreck from your insurance company. They're going to find out anyway, they have
more databases than you can imagine for hiding information from them, may
violate your duties under your insurance
policy.
I mentioned earlier that we would
talk a little about a fifth question. I say to talk a little because it can be
a complicated question even though it usually isn't first. If you're named on
the declarations page you're covered. It covers passengers, who are with you.
If you're a passenger with someone, who has PIP they're personal injury protection PIP
covers you're PIP might cover you - these are the basics of PIP but there's
much more to the subject. The basics are often enough to help you recover your
pip benefits and you may not even need a lawyer if that fits your case.
We hope this article gave you the information that you need. Of course, your
case may not be simple. The major thing that this article cannot cover is how
to handle your claim with the bad driver’s insurance company when the wreck wasn't your fault. This is
especially important if your losses and expenses are more than your pip personal injury protection coverage.
If you are someone close to you is in that situation contact a qualified personal injury lawyer.
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