How Do Bodily Injury Coverage and Medical Payments Coverage Differ?

When buying auto insurance, you really do have a lot of options to select from, which can make the process a bit confusing. It’s always important to know your risks and to work closely with your insurance agent to get into a car insurance plan that matches your specific needs. One of the areas of concern may be in bodily injury and medical payments coverage. What are they? Are they the same thing? Here’s what you need to know.

Bodily Injury Auto Insurance

Bodily injury car insurance is a type that may cover the medical bills of another person. For example, you are involved in a car accident that you are found to be responsible for. Because you caused the accident, your liability insurance should help to pay the bills associated with others who you hurt. This could be other people another car, someone walking or even someone on a bike. It helps you to settle any claims brought against you by your passengers as well. It alleviates much of the risk you face when driving since medical bills can often be thousands of dollars.

Medical Payment Auto Insurance

A secondary type of coverage that is nearly always necessary is medical payments, sometimes called med pay. Medical payments is not a form of liability insurance. Rather, it helps to cover the medical bills that arise as a result of an accident that you cause for you and your passengers. It applies first before any health insurance you have. In other words, if you are involved in an accident that you are responsible for causing, and you are hurt, your medical bills should be paid for by this form of insurance.

What’s Right for You?

Unless you have a very high-quality health insurance plan, it is often best for most people to cover types of risks. Having car insurance that can pay for all medical bills – no matter if they are your own or those of people you injury during an accident – can be very important should an accident occur. Most often, these types of coverage are not necessarily expensive, but they can be very valuable to you in the event of an accident. For that reason, you’ll want to talk to your insurance agent about your options.