Imagine this: through absolutely no fault of your own, you’ve just been involved in a terrible car crash that results in dramatic injuries and hospitalization. Naturally, you’ve decided to sue the other driver for your hospitalization and the costs incurred during the treatment of your injuries. (We all know how exorbitant hospital expenses are.)
However, your medical insurance is sub-par (or perhaps you don’t even have insurance). So you’ll still owe the hospital a considerable sum of money after your insurance payout. At this point, the hospital decides to install a medical lien against your lawsuit. What exactly does this mean?
Let’s spend a moment reviewing liens in general, to give a better idea of medical liens in particular.
Medical Liens 101
A medical lien functions similarly to any other kind of lien. We’ll use an auto lien as a quick example before going into more detail about medical liens.
Let’s assume that you’ve found a used car on the internet that you’d like to buy. You drive over to the owner’s home, and examine the vehicle you plan to purchase. Once everything checks out as expected, you make plans with the owner to come pick up the car the following week. But in the meantime, it’s been discovered that the owner’s ex-wife has a lien installed against the car, since she has some sort of financial investment in the vehicle. This means that she has priority of payment.
In other words, the ex-wife must be paid in order for the lien to be dropped and the car to be sold to you or anyone else. Now let’s return to our unfortunate car crash scenario and look at how a medical lien operates.
The emergency care you’ve had following your crash must be paid for, but your insurance fails to cover everything. In order to guarantee that its expenses will be recouped, the hospital can install a lien against the proceeds of your upcoming lawsuit.
This means that the hospital will get paid before you do once your lawsuit is settled. It’s also important to note that you’re very likely to be denied continued care at this point, even if you need it. So it’s easy to see how all kinds of personal and medical problems could quickly arise from this situation.
But There’s A Solution: Medical Lien Funding
If you find yourself in the precarious situation of having a medical lien placed against you, don’t despair. There are solutions. The quickest and simplest answer is to have a medical lien funding agency purchase your lien. What does this mean, precisely?
Once a qualified pre-settlement agency purchases your lien, it will continue to pay the hospital and your healthcare provider for any necessary ongoing treatment. Your lawsuit (and your expected settlement) will be held as collateral for repayment.
As soon as your lawsuit concludes and settlement funds are advanced, the medical lien funding company will be reimbursed in principal and interest for your ongoing care expenses. The hospital has already been in full for your care by the lien funding agency. So any remaining settlement funds will immediately revert to you: the victim in this scenario.
If your suit falls through and you fail to receive a settlement, you owe the lien funding agency nothing. That’s all there is to it: peace of mind and immediate medical funding in your time of need.
Medical Lien Funding Requirements
As with other varieties of pre-settlement and post-settlement funding, there are requirements that you need to meet in order to be eligible.
First, you must be pursuing a lawsuit over an accident that occurred through no fault of your own. Second, an attorney must be involved. An attorney is a vital part of this process. Ordinarily, he or she will lay out different legal funding options for you, provide expert guidance and arrange the agreement between all relevant parties: the lien funding agency, the hospital, your doctors, and so on.
However, different states have varying legal requirements when it comes to medical lien funding. So due diligence is in order.
Medical Lien Funding: Summing Up
It’s hard to picture a darker scenario than being plagued by massive medical debt (and being denied continued treatment) after a horrendous accident that you were not responsible for. But that’s the sad reality facing people who have a medical lien placed against them.
A qualified pre-settlement agency such as Oasis Financial can offer the hope and peace of mind you need. Once your lien has been approved for funding and purchased by Oasis, all your continued care expenses will be covered in full. After your case settles and you receive your funds, we’ll be paid back for your medical costs with a modest amount of interest. Any money that remains after repayment immediately returns to you.
If your case somehow falls through and you don’t receive the money you were expecting, you owe us absolutely nothing. It’s that simple.
So don’t put off the care you need, or suffer through sleepless nights over medical debt. Call or email us today. We’ll help you get your life back.