Medical Payments coverage is the final type of auto insurance we will be talking about. Medical payments, also called MedPay, works the same was as collision coverage but for medical bills. MedPay coverage will pay your medical bills and the bills of anyone in your car who is injured in a collision, whether you are at fault or not. This will include collisions with stationary objects. Now, you may be wondering what the difference is between MedPay and your health insurance. Well, MedPay can work in two different ways: as primary coverage or as supplemental coverage. If MedPay works as primary coverage it will directly pay for your medical bills. This would happen if you do not have health insurance or if you specifically buy a MedPay plan that does this. Most of the time MedPay works as primary coverage, however, some plans will have it as secondary coverage. This means that your health insurance will pay your medical bills and then MedPay will pay for your deductibles and co-pays on your health insurance. In Colorado if you have health insurance, the providers should bill health insurance so you can use MedPay to cover copay and deductibles.
How much MedPay do I need? MedPay varies a touch more in how coverage works than the other kinds of insurance we have discussed. Some insurance companies sell MedPay on a per accident basis and some sell it on a per person basis. In terms of major carriers, GEICO, State Farm, Allstate, and Esurance carry Medpay as per incident value and Progressive carries it as a per person basis. Generally you buy MedPay in one of 5 brackets: $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $25,000.
And those are the basics of MedPay. Next we will wrap up our auto insurance series and give examples of when each kind of insurance will kick in.
