Everything You Need to Know About Car Crashes, Insurance, and Med Pay Explained!.

Hi, I'm Dr. Jim Hoven, your host of the Difference Makers Podcast. This is a place where people come together that are making a difference for those who want to make a difference, and that's you. We're bringing thought leaders together in a sense of fusion where ideas and concepts and personalities are all driven together into one place at one time, and this is no different. In this episode, you're going to see cool things from cool people making a difference. Hey, everyone. Welcome back. It's time for another episode of the Difference Makers Podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Jim Hoven, and I get to share messages with you that I get from cool people like my returning guest, Brian Calander here. He's our senior partner at Ramos Law, and this is an episode that's going to be really fun because it's going to be something where he's going to be sharing just some broad thoughts about broad topics that he gets asked about all the time or we as a law firm get asked all the time. So this may actually, as you listen to it and as you hear it, this may make you want to ask some questions, and at the end, we'll give you some emails and you can reach out to us directly and get Brian to answer your questions as well. So this is going to be really fun. But before we get started, if you are watching this on YouTube and you want to get notifications of when our episodes are coming out, please do me a favor and hit the bell icon, and that will get you every single time that one of our episodes come out. It's going to make sure it makes it to your inbox. Also, if you like this and you haven't subscribed yet, please do. That helps other people know that this is a really good show. So the more subscribers we have, the better. And again, you won't miss anything. And finally, if you hear some information that brings value to you and you think that you may know someone who could also use this information, if you would just share it, that would be lovely. So I appreciate you. Thanks so much. And it's time to get started with my good friend and our senior partner, Mr. Brian Calandra. Brian, welcome to the show. Good to be here again. Thank you, sir. Yes, and you are newly married. How is it being newly married? I was fortunate enough to be at your wedding and it was a wonderful time and it was good. Well, you weren't just at the wedding, you presided over the wedding, which we appreciated. We're in the ring and everything today. Nice. No, happily married. We had a great trip to Alaska, really enjoyed it. And of course, you had a great ceremony for us. So we really appreciate that. Oh, no, it was so fun. It was so cool. So for those of you that didn't know Brian was going to get married, and that was probably all of you watching this since people are watching it from everywhere. You know, Brian and Sandy have been just a great couple and watching their relationship develop and come into the place where they decided to take that ultimate step of connection and commitment in getting married. It was just so cool. It was such a beautiful thing. People coming in and, you know, I mean, there was even hard times and adversity that came through and still everyone came together in a loving way. It was just a great experience for me. So thank you for that. You bet. And as you've been back now, you just settled back into your senior partner role, taking care of a whole number of things from handling your own caseload to dealing with people who have questions or even concerns at times of working with attorneys, all things that you've been doing. What are some of the bigger questions recently or things that you're seeing from your perspective of having all these different roles? What are some of the things that you're seeing that people are asking you about when it comes to them being involved or injured in a car crash? Anything come to your mind? Well, you know, it's strange because people come to us for help, right? And that's what we're here to do. But they don't know what the heck they're doing because they've been in a car accident. Typically, I've never been in a car accident before. They don't know how it works and they rely on bits and pieces of information that they've received from maybe TV shows or movies or from a friend or a TV commercial. And a lot of times that's just not accurate, reliable information in general or not specific to their case. So a lot of times people are just coming to us saying just kind of general questions like, how does this all work? How long is this going to take? How much money am I going to get? You know, that's a common question. And quite frankly, in the early stages, that's a question we can't answer right away, right? We've got to gather information. We have to know more about the injuries. We have to know more about how much care and treatment they're going to need. We need to know about how much insurance coverage there is before we can start answering some of these questions that come in on a regular basis. And the two most common questions I would have to say are, how long is this going to take? How much money am I going to get? Yeah. Let me bring something up right there before you answer those two questions because one of the second one, which is where I'm going to go with this. I've heard people literally advertise as attorneys saying, call now to see what your case is worth. But what you just shared with us is you don't always know that at the beginning. What's the gap there? I don't understand with me being in this company, in this firm with you for now, you know, you over 10 years and me coming up on my eighth year. I don't get that. Do you have any thoughts on why someone would say, let us tell you what your case is worth? Are they just basing that on past experience? Are they basing it on what they think limits are? Or maybe you can't even speak to it because we're not the ones saying it. It's kind of a gimmicky way to get people to call you in my opinion, because quite frankly, unless you have the total universe of information, meaning client is no longer treating or you know exactly how much insurance coverage there is. It's a question that quite frankly, just cannot be answered. It cannot be answered until you know all of the information. So if someone's been in an accident through no fault of their own, and they're calling you within a couple of days or even a couple of weeks, or maybe even a few months, you're still probably not going to be able to answer that question accurately for that client. And here at Ramos Law, we're not going to do that. We're going to give you an honest answer and tell you, look, we don't know, but we're going to help you figure this out. Because sometimes attorneys maybe outside this firm are famous for telling the client everything they want to hear to get that signature on a contract, and then start layering in the bad news later over time. And that's just not the way we do things here. Right. And so I guess staying on that theme a little bit, it's interesting to me that it's not just the injuries and how bad the car crash it was that means someone is going to get a different amount of money in a settlement, because at the end of the day, there's only so much money and it depends on what the people involved in the accident have purchased in the way of insurance. So you could have a horrible accident, super big damage, tons of injuries, and dismemberment, disfigurement, someone ruined for life. But if there's only minimal coverages, it's not going to be a fair compensation equal to all those other things, right? So that's another big play is how much coverage does someone have? It happens all the time. And let me tell you what a really boring subject is that no one cares about. Car insurance, right? People listening, they don't care, right? They might not care at all. Let me tell you when it becomes not boring when you've been injured in a car accident and you're a client here at Ramos Law. And you need it. And you need it. Absolutely. Now, all of a sudden, it's become an interesting topic that people aren't educated on. They don't know what they have. Why is that? Well, one of the main reasons is the businesses selling the product, right? The insurance companies selling the products are not educating the consumer, right? And if someone's listening right now, I'll just ask you, how much car insurance do you have? And I'd be willing to bet that very few to almost none of you watching know the answer to that question, even though you've been driving for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. Now, why is that? How can I be driving a car for 40 years and have no idea how much car insurance I have? Because their answer is, I have full coverage. Their answer is full coverage, which is a nonsensical thing that the car insurance companies want. They tell you to make you feel safe. Yeah. Because what does that mean? It doesn't really mean anything other than I have the available coverages, but it says nothing about how much money is on each one of those coverages that I've purchased, which is really the important factor here. Yeah. Is full coverage talking mostly about then the car, the property, as opposed to injury side? Because people don't know those are separate issues, right? Right. Property damage versus bodily injury side. Right. And it depends on who you ask, right? I mean, really, what the hell does it mean? We don't really know exactly what it means because it doesn't mean anything. Because what really matters is what coverages do I have and how much money do I have on each one? And kind of circling back, the reason why people don't know the answer to the question of what do I have is because no one's educating them on the product. The number one driving factor or force behind car insurance sales is price, right? How do I get my premiums down as low as I can? And that's the selling point. But no one is saying, hey, when you do this, you're really creating risk for you, your family and your friends. And they have no idea until they get in an accident. They come to see us. And there's only so much we can do. Right. And what a lot of people think is, wait, it wasn't my fault. What are we talking about my insurance at all here for? And so I think it bodes an explanation from you to say, wait, you just said the coverages that I have. Well, if I wasn't at fault, why does it matter on my coverage? Yeah, no, that's a great question. Folks listening, when it comes to car insurance, you want to insure yourself in such a way that you don't care what the other person has that hits you. That's how you want to look at your car insurance, because the minimum policy here in the state of Colorado is what's called a 2550. It means it's $25,000 per person and no more than $50,000 for the entire accident, even if they crash into a busload of 30 school kids. Okay. So what does that mean? That's about 70 to 80% we estimate of the insured market, which has nothing to do with the uninsured market, people driving around without car insurance, which is a lot of those folks. So $25,000 if you've been injured in a car accident is almost like a zero. Yeah. It does not go far. You can burn that up just getting in an ambulance and going to the emergency room and getting some imaging done. Right. Okay. So, so we know that more than half of the people out there have this minimum policy. So that means you get hit, you get injured. What do I do now? Right? The only thing you can do is to make sure you have insured yourself properly on your own policy. There's two critical types of insurance that you're going to want to buy. Okay. And I'll start with the most important one first. And that's that underinsured uninsured motorist coverage or UMUIM. And what that stuff does is it kicks in. If the person that hits you has no insurance, which you're definitely going to want it then. Otherwise you're looking at a zero or the person that hits you just doesn't have enough, which is very often the case, which we see here on a day, literally a daily basis. Okay. So again, that minimum policy, which would be full coverage on an underinsured is that 25 50, you could buy a 25 50 policy that would kick in. It's not enough, right? You literally want to buy as much as you can. And for the folks listening, I, my personal coverage, I'll just disclose is 1.5 million. That's all they'll sell me. I can't get a bigger underinsured policy. That's, that's really all I can get. And that may sound like a ton of money, but if you're catastrophically injured in a car accident, you have a head injury, you need spine surgery. You're never going to walk right again, whatever it may be. 1.5 million doesn't sound like a lot of money at that point. Take care of you, your loved ones for the rest of your life. Right. And here's the funny thing is, and I'll let you go into this, but when people are watching or listening, they might be going 1.5 million in insurance. I can't afford that. And, and that might be true, but by far the vast majority of the money made by the insurance company is charged for the basic lowest level premium. So as you start stacking coverage on it's literally pennies on the dollar, right? Compared to this. So you can get far more than you think you can when you're going, you're not going much above your basic policy to start taking care of yourself more towards whether it's a hundred thousand, 250, 500, it doesn't matter what the level is just to the best of your ability. It's not that much more. No, you nailed it. And when, when our clients find out, right, that they could have had say a hundred thousand dollars in coverage, as opposed to the zero that they bought for themselves on this underinsured stuff we're talking about, when they find out they could have had it for maybe 10 bucks a month, right? And they've been hurt by a driver with a minimum policy. And they're looking at a $25,000 settlement on a case that should be, you know, well into six figures. They'll look on their faces and the anguish that they go through. Cause their question is, is, well, why didn't anybody tell me? Yes. Why didn't my insurance company tell me that I was at risk? Well, there's a good answer for that. The insurance companies don't want you to buy that good coverage. They don't want to sell it to you because they don't want to pay those big claims. And isn't that interesting because ideally you would think like for most every other business in the world, the more you sell, the better it is. The agents would make more money, more commissions. The company would make more money. But in this case, they would rather make less on the premiums to pay less on the benefits. That like, is there any other industry you can think of that does that? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't even make sense when you explain it to the clients, right? Why wouldn't they want to sell me more? Right? Well, they don't want to pay that money when, when bad things happen. And they lobby, uh, uh, quite intensely. All the state legislatures around the country, the insurance companies are powerful. These are multi-billion dollar corporations. They lobby the state legislatures and they say, and they cry like little babies. Oh gosh, if you don't keep these minimums low, we're going to go out of business. You got to keep these minimums lower. We're just not going to be able to provide insurance for people at all. And then that's going to be catastrophic. Meanwhile, they continue to be multi-billion dollar companies. So yeah, it's all part of the problem. And we do our best here at Rommel's law to educate. We're just one law firm. And, and I'm happy folks listening. I'm happy to review your policies with you. You can call me anytime. It's a free service that we have here because we want you to a, be educated and be properly insured. If anything were to happen to you. Yeah. And the important thing, if you are watching or listening in about getting your policy checked is like for us and you know, I'll go out and do presentations on this. Brian goes out and does presentations on this to groups of people. And they're very educated. They're very smart. They're very even business savvy. But when you ask him the question that he just said, how much car insurance do you have? They say full coverage, right? And then when you start looking at it, they want to save premium money. So they're getting 25, 50 on UM, if anything, and in Colorado, now we're in multiple States, right? I think we have licenses in 20 States or ish. And when people are in Colorado here, they're required, the insurance company is required to tell you, Hey, there's these carrier, these coverages called MedPay and UM. And if you don't want them, if you want to save a little money, you just sign right here. And then you won't have to pay for them. They don't go deep into what they are. They don't tell you the likelihood of you needing them. They don't do any of that stuff. And so that creates a situation where now the person is at fault for waving away their own coverage because they didn't understand. So you and I have been on a mission for years now of trying to, to educate this. And I'll tell you a quick story for those of you that like stories. And I know Brian, there's a person who's a local personality in town here. And so this person was in an accident. And so she called me directly and said, Hey, I'm in this crash. And I said, what happened? She said that she was now she drives a high end car and it got wiped out from behind by someone else, right? Wiped her out, major damages to her car, completely totaled it, major damages to her. She couldn't work for weeks. And again, you know, she's a public persona that causes problems. All these things happen. And it turns out that with all her medical bills and all the rest of it, she blew through the policies. She had no idea what UM was. She had no idea what MedPay was. And unfortunately I hadn't had the chance to visit with her. Like we're visiting with these folks now to say, we have no skin in the game, right? We don't win for people having, for buying car insurance. We don't sell insurance. We don't make any money. We're just trying to tell people, look, if you don't have enough, when you need it, it's a problem. And that's what happened to her. Literally it got bad enough where all of her medical bills and everything else, they, they, what we call, or what you lawyers call tendered the limits, which means they gave up all the limits that were available. They did it in like two seconds. And this person was off the hook. The person who hit her was off the hook because that's all the coverage they had. And she didn't have any additional coverage. And so basically her medical bills got paid, but she missed all this time from work. She had all this thing and there was nothing left to give. Right. And I'm sure you hear that all the time. Well, that's a question that comes up, right? Because the client, you go to the client and say, look, the driver that hit you has a minimum policy of $25,000. And the client comes back and says, aren't we going to sue them? Well, that's a good question, right? It makes sense. You know, if you're thinking through logically, this person hurt me, I should be able to sue them and get what they owe me. Well, guess what? If they have a $25,000 policy, there's a real good chance they don't have any money to go and get because a lot of the equity in the home is protected. You can't go and take that. And so there's bankruptcy laws for other stuff. And so it's rare to pretty much never that you're going to be able to successfully prosecute a lawsuit against a driver that doesn't have enough insurance because you have to spend your way to that lawsuit. And I'm not talking about attorney fees paid to Ramos Law. I'm talking about how much it costs to bring a case to trial, which can be 20, 30, $40,000 in expenses, filing fees, deposition fees, expert fees, whatever it may be. Then you have this judgment in your hand that says, hey, driver, you owe me money, but it's worth its weight in monopoly money. Because you're never going to see that money just to try to collect back what you spent. So those clients ultimately really frustrated. And let's just use a couple of examples. I like examples because it really helps people understand how it all works. Because you might be looking at your insurance policy, folks listening, and it says here, oh, wow, I have a $100,000 policy here. Sounds like a ton of money, doesn't it? Well, let's see if it is a ton of money. Two of the most common injuries that we see here at Ramos Law are rotator cuff tears, right? And you know all this stuff, you being a chiropractor. Yeah, it's because when someone's holding steering wheel, they get in a major impact in a crash, their body can't absorb the force. And if there was any kind of issue, their head was turned or any previous injury in that shoulder, it's a problem. Right. And then also, of course, we see a ton of spine injuries. Yes. Herniated discs and those types of things, stuff you've treated as a chiropractor more times than I can count. And so in many cases, these folks need either a rotator cuff surgical repair, or they need some kind of spine surgery, whether it be a fusion or a discectomy, laminectomy, whatever it is, go in there and cleaning stuff out so they're not touching the nerve roots. Well, the going rate for any of those surgeries typically is at least $100,000, okay? So there goes your $100,000, folks, that you have on that policy that you think sounds like a surgery. Well, what if that surgery doesn't go well? What if you still need physical therapy or chiropractic treatment or massage therapy, or you need medication, right? Or you're just still in pain for the rest of your life, or you can't go back to your job, whatever it may have been because the shoulder's not right or the spine isn't right. Now, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Because there is no other money to go get. Yes. And that's why folks, when they look at their insurance policies, they even might feel like they have enough, but they don't. They really just don't if there's something bad that's going to happen. And guess what? No one expects to be in a car accident. None of the people that call us for help expected this idiot driver to rear-end them at 60 miles an hour, but it happens all the time. Yes. And I think I've known you to have a case or two like this too and seen it throughout the firm where it's that bad of an accident that one person needs all those things. What if there's two or three in the car and they all get hurt to that level? And you briefly touched on this, but with the insurance, if you have 100,000, the combining factor of that is 300,000. But if there's 500,000 in bills across those three people, no one gets more than 100,000 and you only got 300 cap for everybody in that car, two, three, five, however many people are in there. And so now it can really create financial havoc because, and I know this is something that's been true for a long time and I don't know the exact percentage that car accidents play in this, the number one cause of bankruptcy, medical bills. Absolutely. And a lot of those people have health insurance. So if you're in underinsured situation and your medical bills are going up and you're seeing all these people and you spend two, three, 400 grand in medical bills, or even if there's only $25,000 policy, you've got 50, 60, 80 grand in medical bills. What are you going to do? Right? And it can cause bankruptcy issues, financial ruin. Nothing breaks my heart more than someone who's a hard worker. They've got their family. They're just trying to provide day to day. And they're on their way to, as a family to their, you know, go eat or to church or something. And they get careened and multiple people have major injuries and they did not buy UM or MedPay. And the person had minimum or no coverage and their hands are up and they're saying, wait, what happened? And they're in financial room because now they can't work. They have all these medical bills they can't pay. It literally makes my stomach turn. And that's why we're so passionate about this subject, right? Because we see it every single day here at the firm where we can't make people whole. You know, by way of example, I'm working on a case right now. This was a case that was in the news, where a semi truck took out several vehicles at high speeds. The family that we're working for, our client is deceased. His partner, his girlfriend was in the car. She's also deceased. And two other folks were very seriously injured that we don't represent, meaning air flighted from the scene, catastrophic life-changing injuries. And based on where we are right now in the case, it looks like there's only a million dollars in coverage and that the company involved is bankrupt beyond that. And so you have two families that have lost a loved one. You have two other people that are catastrophically injured and those folks are going to be splitting up a And that's nothing, right? To these folks, that's really nothing. And so, and then here comes the question, right? The question is as well, how much underinsured motorists did these folks have? 25,000. 25,000 is all they had. And so if they had had the 1.5 million that I purchased for my family and protect my loved ones, that money would be coming down the pipeline to them and they wouldn't have to share it with those other folks that got catastrophically injured because that's their own personal policy, right? And so that kind of touches on what you're talking about, which is we don't want to worry about what other people have because we might have to, not only might not be enough, we also might have to share it because multiple people have been injured in the car accident. When we buy our own insurance, we only share it with the people that are in our car. People that quite frankly, we care the most about, that we love the most and we want to make sure we protect it. Oh, such good advice. So if you're watching or listening, make sure that you're checking again with your insurance agent. Simple question. And Brian can help you. He's done it. He does it every day. He's done a thousand times of saying, Hey, what are your, you know, what are your policy or what are my policies? Say Brian, Brian looks at and says, okay, this is what this means. This is what that means. But it's a simple call to your insurance agent to find out what a cost is for you to increase those things. And speaking of that, Brian, you said the two questions that you got was how much is my case worth? And so we dove down this rabbit hole into deciding you don't know how much your case is worth until you know how much damages there is to the car. If you lost work activities of life that don't get happened and the coverage is all those things add up to what a case is worth. And we can talk about more of that if you'd like. And I also want to address this time or this other question that you had of how long is it going to take? And I think we start that process where we just left off with severe injuries mean lots of treatment and it takes time versus minor injuries need little time to get fixed. And so those cases settle faster. So can you address that the timeframe and how medical treatment comes into play to making that question answerable for folks? I'll try. And then I want to come back to MedPay and make sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We didn't address that. Thank you. Yeah. I'll remind you. So when clients ask me, how long is this going to take? Right. And I get that question all the time. Really, it's one of the most common. I usually try to break down the answer by identifying the variables involved that are going to ultimately answer the question, because usually I can't answer the question in the short term. Right. And so here's how I break it down for clients. Well, the first thing we need to figure out, of course, is how much money is available. Right. We've covered that today. That's going to be a key placeholder for us, because if my case is worth $50,000 and there's only $25,000 in coverage, we're going to be able to resolve that claim very quickly. Right. So knowing how much money is available is a key first question. Right. Now, the next question is, well, the extent of the injuries. And by that, I mean, how much care and treatment are you going to need and how long are you going to need it? Right. Some folks, yeah, you know, eight weeks of conservative care with a good chiropractor like you and a physical therapist, and they're better, and we can go out and negotiate them a settlement. Right. Other folks, well, that conservative therapy fails. Now I have surgery. And we're not going to go and try to settle that case if there's available funds, because surgeries go wrong. We've got to get you a six months post-op. How are you doing now? Are you a hundred percent better? What does that mean for your future? So one of two things is going to happen. Either your case is going to be worth more than the amount of money that's available, and we're going to move and try to settle it. Or there's a bunch of money available and you get as good as you're going to get. And we know what that means for your medical and personal future so that we can map out what a fair result is going to be. So care paid for, for the treatment and whatever care you might need. Absolutely. After the case is settled or closed. We need that medical lay of the land. If there's a million dollars in insurance and your case is worth somewhere between, or less, let's just say less than that. We have to know exactly what everything means for your future so that we can document and negotiate the right result based on what your future holds. Now there's one other little layer into all of this, and that is the gosh darn insurance company decides not to be fair. And that can happen, folks, any step of the way for any type of case that you might have. Because then Rommel's Law is going to come to you and say, look, we did our best. This bloodsucking insurance company doesn't want to be fair to you. We recommend that you file a lawsuit. Okay? Yeah. Because people need to know that. Absolutely. When someone comes to see an attorney, they're not filing a lawsuit. Or the other big thing that I've heard is, oh, it was a young driver. They were inexperienced. I don't want to hurt them for the rest of their lives. So, no, I really don't want to sue them. And I've had this conversation many times with people I've met. I'm like, no, no, no, no. You're not suing anybody unless the insurance company doesn't act right and fairly by offering you what you feel is a fair amount for what happened. If that doesn't happen, right now the attorney is just your advocate, right? And they advocate with these people every single day to get to a fair endpoint. But if they can't do that, then and only then does a lawsuit come in. And you're not going after little Tommy Jones 16-year-old. It's the insurance company that they pay for is who the one that you're going after. So that's a big misconception that people have about getting a lawyer in the first place or getting involved because they don't want to be involved with suing people or hurting an individual. Well, it's in your best interest to resolve your claim without a lawsuit if it's fair. Yes. And that's all Ramos Law is looking for. We want what's fair, not a penniless. And if it isn't fair based on the thousands and thousands of cases that we've handled here and all the lawyers that we have and all the expertise that we have, if it's not fair, we're going to go to the client and we're going to say, look, this isn't fair. We think you should file a lawsuit. We think if we file this lawsuit, we're going to get you a better result. But that takes time, right? We could be tacking on another year plus before we get that result for you. And the insurance companies know that. And they also know that a lot of folks can't afford to wait. So it puts that pressure on them. Hey, that pressure is there. I need, you know, Brian, I need to settle. I can't afford to live my life right now. And then they'll say, well, I don't want to file that lawsuit because I can't wait. And of course, we respect the choices of our clients. We're not a firm that pressures people to file lawsuits. We're not a firm that pressures people to settle cases. We're going to do what you want. We're going to give you advice and we're going to do what you want. But when you talk about how long is my case going to take? And it could be a small case because if they offer you $15,000 and we think your case is worth $22,000, we're going to tell you to file that lawsuit, hold that insurance company honest, right? So now instead of your case being over in maybe three, four months, now we're at a year and a half. Gotcha. Gotcha. And so the time component, it's so variable based on all of those things. Let's talk, um, go back to right now to the MedPay thing. I want to make sure we hit that because that was the other thing that I would buy for me to protect me. Underinsured, uninsured motorist or UMUIM and MedPay. Why don't you describe MedPay? Yeah, those are the two coverages that are really critical on your own policy. Now there's another coverage called bodily injury, right? And that's what protects us if we happen to hurt somebody else, right? That's what's going to pay the other person. Now this is ticky tack, but you can't buy more to protect yourself than you protect others. So if you're underinsured, uninsured is high, then your bodily injury is going to mirror that. And here's the worst mistake I've ever seen. Yeah. Saw someone do it. They had a 100, 300,000 bodily injury policy. And they paid to have, then they signed off to have less coverage for themselves. They got a 25,000 UM. And this was a girl I went to high school with, and she had no idea what any of it meant. And so I said, no, no, no, no, no. If you're going to spend that much to protect the other guy, I always say BI protects the other guy. UM protects you that you need to float your boat to that level. And so anyway, we've talked about that MedPay. Yeah. So the MedPay, it's called medical payments coverage. You're very familiar with it as a It's an important coverage. And so the minimum policy here in Colorado is five grand. Now it's required, but you can waive out of it. And if you waive out of it, you sign a form that says, I don't want this coverage. And the insurance company folks actually has to produce that document to us that signed waiver. If they can't, we're going to get you $5,000 in medical payments coverage. We've done that quite a bit here at Ramos Law over the years, because insurance companies oftentimes don't keep good records. If they don't have the document, hey, too bad. You owe the coverage, right? And we check that in every single one of our cases, because that could be an additional $5,000. Now here's how the medical payments coverage works, folks. You can use that MedPay to pay, surprise, surprise for medical bills, but you can also use it to pay for deductibles, co-pays, and things that your health insurance might not cover. And quite frankly, the things you might need the most, if you're injured in a car accident, things like a chiropractor, oftentimes there's no coverage there, or an acupuncturist, definitely no coverage there on most policies, or a massage therapist, again, no coverage. And you can use those funds to pay for those types of services. Now here's the cool part about it. The, people are going to start going nuts with all these little terms we're using, but the other, what's this called? The other guy's insurance doesn't get credit for those payments. So you have $5,000 in bills. You take your MedPay, you pay it. The other guy owes you that 5,000 back. You put it right in your pocket. That's amazing. Yeah. So, and it goes in increments, right? 5,000, 10,000, that kind of thing. So you can purchase more. How do you recommend people look at the amount of payment or the amount of coverage purchase for MedPay? Buy it all. So the most, most carriers only will go up to 25,000. That's what I carry. I know USAA has a hundred thousand dollar policy. It's a bit of a squirrely policy. They play Trixie with it, where they try to cap it, where you have to use it in a year, which you might not need, you might need it more after that. Right. But, but having that 25,000 is excellent. And here's what some of the insurance companies will tell the consumer to get them not to buy it. They'll say, you know, let's use you as an example. You know, do you have health insurance? Yes. Yeah. You got great health insurance here at Ramos Law, right? You don't need this MedPay, you're covered. Well, okay, fine. I'm covered under my health insurance, but with the math that I just explained, right? Well, hold on. My health insurance doesn't cover that acupuncturist. It doesn't cover that massage therapist. It won't pay my deductibles and my co-pays and I'm cash poor right now because I just got hurt and I got no money coming in. So having that MedPay is critical for our clients to not only end up with more money in their pockets, but it also helps them kind of manage financially in the short term as they're getting their care and treatment. Plus it's getting them access to care and treatment their insurance isn't going to cover. And that's where having a great connection with a, with a quality lawyer, quality law firm makes a big difference. Because what I've seen, like I've been involved in, in talking with folks to say, well, listen, you know, you're getting this treatment, this treatment, this treatment, this treatment. What's the best way to utilize that MedPay? Because if all the MedPay goes to one place, then it all of a sudden could have issues so that you don't have it used for others. So when you have someone who knows how to help just distribute it amongst all these different people that are helping you, you literally leverage your dollar even further. And here's the cool thing that I really want you to explain is everybody that I had a chiropractor literally last week, Brian, literally call me up and say, Hey Jim, um, I have a, I have a patient I'm going to have call you. And I said, oh, okay. Yeah. What's up? And he said, I want you to represent your firm to represent them. But I also want you to help explain to them how, cause they don't want to use their MedPay. It wasn't their fault. So I don't want to use their MedPay because they're worried that their rates are going to go up if they use MedPay. And that is categorically false, right? State law, state law. So, and you know, you asked earlier, what questions do I get? This is the question I get, right? Are my rates going to go up? If I use that underinsured motorist coverage, if I use that MedPay, you know, are my rates going to go up? I didn't do anything wrong here. I don't, I don't want to pay more in insurance. So I don't even want to use my coverage. Well, first of all, that's silly because you bought the like these. That's number one. But number two, state law prevents the insurance carrier from raising your rates if you're not at fault. And I've gone round and round with people on this subject. Um, and you know, had people pissed off at me because I was so adamant that they use their coverage. Ultimately it's their choice, but we've had clients just flat out, not let us touch their coverage even after we've shown them a law because they're so afraid of their rates going up. Makes no sense. It happens. Yeah. But hopefully education, things like this will help people feel at ease that if they have to use that it's, it's available and there's no repercussions to them. It's only for the good. Well, here's the funny thing about MedPay. Um, I don't know what we call it a funny thing, but here at Ramos law, we don't charge any attorney fees on the MedPay money. Yeah, that's unique. It is unique. And, and it's important to us because, you know, we want to help the client as much as we can and we want to help them get the most bang for their buck out of that MedPay fund. And because, and I know you know a lot about medical billing more so than the average person and with MedPay, you know, if the hospital, for example, the emergency room gets their hands on it, they're going to be billing that MedPay at a hundred cents on the dollar. Now, a lot of folks out there, you don't know a lot about medical billing, but most of you have probably seen what's called an explanation of benefits from your health insurance company at some point for some medical bill, right? And you might see this bill for like $10,000 for an emergency room visit and then Anthem or Blue Cross or Aetna or Cigna or whatever sends you this statement. And it says that even though the bill was 10,000, they got it reduced to 3000 because there's a contract between that insurance company and that hospital. Well, that's all fine and great because in the car insurance world, maybe I'm taking this a little too far, but in the car insurance world, folks, you get to present that $10,000 bill to State Farm, to all state, to farmers, and they owe that money to you. And the 3000 that was paid by your health insurance, we pay them back. And a lot of times here at Ramos Law, we can negotiate a discount. Yes. Which means more money for the person at the end. Absolutely. A lot more money. A lot more. A lot more money because the insurance company, the health insurance, it may be paying about 30 cents on the dollar, sometimes 20, sometimes 40, depending. But at Ramos Law, if you come to us right away, we're going to do our best to make sure that that hospital never finds out about that MedPay because they have the right under the law to bill it, but they got to find it. So all of these emergency rooms have these little glossy little brochures. We can help you. We can help you keep your bills down. Give us your MedPay because the consumer doesn't know they're about to give away money. So here at Ramos Law, we do everything we can to protect that MedPay so that the client is getting the most they can out of it. And at the same time, and I think this is a great thing that Dr. Ramos does, we don't charge any extra for that service. Yes. That's good. I want to ask you one more question. And it's the thing that is creating all of this in the first place, which is the medical bills. Not all doctors are created equal, just like not all engineers or attorneys or carpenters or whatever. And not to say that, of course there's bad everything, but we're not talking about this. We're just talking about qualified to treat trauma. I think one of the big advantages of our firm here, and I mean, you know so many of these doctors and you've gone through a lot of medical procedures yourself, is when you know the doctors that work with trauma in general and specifically accidents, because PI is a broad, it's a broad category. It could be dog bites. It could be getting hit by a skier on a slope. There's all kinds of things. But right, we've been talking about car accidents for the majority of our show today. Not everyone knows how to deal with those, and especially in a comprehensive multidisciplinary way. To a hammer, everything's a nail. And if you go to a general practitioner that doesn't know these things, what they use as their hammer and the nail is just medication, right? Oh, take this for two months. Let's see how you do. If not, we'll send you to therapy. In the meantime, that two months has created a huge physiological problem with the trauma healing response not being managed correctly by multiple providers. So can you just speak to the importance of trauma providers and that network that you in large part have been, you know, a part of helping us connect with and build and how that serves our clients and people who really, really need stuff. So that if someone is in an accident, they need to know that the doctors they're going to know what they're doing for this specific kind of injury. It's absolutely critical for the medical result and the legal result, which go hand in hand for us, right? And so everybody knows, I think everybody knows that's watching that Dr. Ramos, the leader of our firm is a medical doctor and he's an attorney. And that really helps us kind of have an edge on what we do and how we do it. But what most people probably don't know is this really brilliant idea that Dr. Ramos had many, many years ago, even before you joined us. And that was to create an independent medical team within the law firm. Okay. I think we're probably the only law firm in the country that has one. And this team is made up of medical people, people that have worked for medical providers and what they do. Well, they do a lot of things actually. And what they do though, in large part is they work with medical providers all over the place to help build those relationships with those providers and to help our clients get the care they need from the right people when they need it. And the rule of thumb around here, and I've been working with Dr. Ramos for almost 13 years now, and it's always been the rule is we won't work with any medical provider that Dr. Ramos wouldn't send his own family to. That's our benchmark. And that's our standard because when it comes to getting the right medical care and treatment, there's two really important things for us as attorneys. One, of course, is to get the client better. That's the most important thing. But the next level for us as the attorney trying to get that great result for the client is the documentation, right? You could be a great doctor, get a great result for that patient. But if your documentation is lackluster. Yeah. If you write a crappy story, write a crappy story of what happened. Telling that story to get a good result because these insurance companies, they don't care what I say. They don't care what the client says. What they do is they look at those medical records. And so when we're working with medical providers and Dr. Ramos, he helps educate medical providers on this point. That's something else that our medical team is vetting and looking at to make sure we're working with the right people for our clients. That's so good. So good. Well, Brian, this has been such a great episode. It's always good to talk with you and get back into the weeds a little bit because that's not part of what I get to do every day is talk about these things. So with you being so ground level and do with that and talk with clients on these issues every day, I hope that those of you watching and listening had a chance to learn something, especially A, go get your car insurance checked. B, if you have any questions, call Brian and our team and I'll have him share how to best get ahold of himself and C, if this is something that's brought you value, please like it, please share it because this is a message that so many people don't know. They just don't know. And the time you don't want to learn this is when you need it. You want to know this lesson before you need it. So this has been a great episode. Brian, how would people get ahold of you if they wanted to reach out, visit with you, learn about their policies, that kind of thing? Well, it's super easy. Dr. Ramos doesn't let me leave the office. I sleep here, I shower here, and this is where my life is. But no, in all seriousness, the firm does actually encourage great quality of life. But again, my name is Brian Calandra. And the phone number here at the office is 303-733-6353. And our team can connect you. I'm on the phone a lot for what I do. And so the team can put some time on the calendar. So you're not wasting time playing phone tag. Email is great. I respond very quickly. It's very simple. It's Brian with an I at Ramos Law. Please reach out to me anytime if you have questions about your policy, questions in general, need a lawyer, even if it's for something that we might not do. I typically have relationships with folks that can help you. And we're just here to do all we can. We appreciate you. You take care. Have a great day. That's awesome. Remember, Brian, B-R-I-A-N at RamosLaw.com. So if you have any more questions, please reach out. You can reach out to me, by the way, Jim at RamosLaw.com. And if there's another topic you'd like to hear, email me. Let me know. We'll find a guest. We'll bring someone on, whether it's about the law or something else. Those of you that have followed the show for over 240 episodes now, you know we talk to a lot of people about a lot of things. So until next time, keep making a difference.