What is the difference between bodily injury liability and medical payments on an auto insurance policy?
Medical payments apply to people in your vehicle. For example, you are the carpool driver and you are involved in a minor fender bender. Your co-worker has an injury and they don’t have any medical benefits to pay for seeing a doctor and getting treatment. Provided they just want their doctor’s bills paid and aren’t looking to sue you because they happened to be in your car when an accident happened, this is handy to have. That way they can get their bills taken care of while the two insurance companies quibble over which driver was at fault. Same with people who tote other people’s kids around a lot. It is typically on policies in amounts ranging from $1-10,000. Most common coverage for $5,000. Of course, they can always just sue the other driver for the payments too (if the other driver is at fault). Medical Payments coverage is also useful if you don’t have any health insurance. You can’t sue yourself if you have an accident that is your fault, after all. If you have this coverage,
The medical payments part of the policy covers reimbursing the victims of an accident for the actual billed cost of medical treatment for their injuries, whereas the B.I.Liability is for “pain and suffering” type awards not directly related to the cost of treatment, such as the fruit of a $100,000 suit against you for careless driving resulting in injury or death.
