When it comes to the settlement phase of personal injury litigation, plaintiffs and their counsel will typically be focused on the bottom line – how close to their settlement demand has the defendant’s offer come? But quite often a proposed personal injury settlement will introduce a host of additional complications, which make it important to evaluate more than just the bottom line number. The most important such complicating factor is determining how your client is going to get medical coverage once the settlement is done.
All in all, there are lots of ways a client may end up forfeiting the right to continue receiving subsidized medical coverage after receiving a large monetary damages award, so analyzing your client’s health care needs post-settlement is a vital part of any personal injury settlement process. Unfortunately, many lawyers fail to pay heed to this issue, as a result of which their clients end up needlessly squandering some of the significant benefits of the eventual settlement.
