Oregon PIP

All Oregon non-commercial auto insurance policies have no-fault Personal Injury Protection (PIP) healthcare and wage loss coverage. What this means is that if you are injured in an auto, bicycle, or pedestrian accident, your auto insurance provides a minimum of one year and $15,000 in no-fault medical coverage. In addition to medical coverage, your personal injury protection insurance provides wage loss coverage. This coverage is mandatory for all auto insurance, but not motorcycle insurance.

If the accident was not your fault, the best course of action is to pursue the at fault driver’s insurance company for your medical expenses as well as your pain and suffering. If you were at fault, your only choice is to sue your insurance company or request arbitration.

Whether or not you have to pay the benefits back out of any settlement or award depends largely on what your attorney does early on in your case. Most of the time I can force the insurance companies to elect to pay me a fee to recover the medical expenses or waive recovery out of my client’s settlement or award. Insurance companies do not want to pay me a fee, so the vast majority of the time the insurance companies do not require any repayment by my clients.

If you have healthcare insurance, your healthcare insurance will usually pay any additional amounts. If you do not have healthcare insurance, you will be billed personally for any amounts in excess of your PIP coverage. Oftentimes I can work with providers to get them to wait for payment until the case is resolved.

That depends on whether or not you have healthcare insurance. If you have good healthcare insurance with low co-pays, than buying more than the minimum PIP coverage is not as important. If you do not have healthcare insurance, than you should buy more than the minimum PIP coverage.