Cobb County Insurance Tricks

Hi. I’m Roger Ghai and I wanted to talk today a little bit about tricks that the insurance companies use in trying to settle your car accident case with you. One of the primary tricks that they use is what’s known as “deliberate delay”. The insurance company knows number one: that the doctors are wanting to get paid and that the doctors maybe dunning you for all of the medical expenses. They know too that you may have trouble even paying your deductibles, you may have trouble paying your co-payments.
They know all of that, so what they do is they delay, delay, delay the case because they even, in fact, know that you may not have health insurance.
Another trick that the insurance companies use is to request unnecessary information. They may request that data, this data, all the stuff that is really irrelevant to the case and does not make a hill of beans of a difference as to the amount they’re actually going to offer you, but why they do that is because they know that the longer they hang on to the money that they are going to pay eventually out to you that they’re going to be earning a lot of interest.
Another trick that the insurance companies use is to dispute your medical treatment. They might go ahead and say, “Well, you should have treated with the doctor for only six weeks instead the two months that you actually treated with,” or, “You should have treated with the chiropractor for just 6 weeks versus 10 weeks.” You have to remember that the insurance companies only use these tricks because they don’t want to pay on your claim.
Remember this. The insurance adjuster on the other end of the phone is not medically trained. They’re not. They’ve never examined you. They don’t know anything about your actual physical condition but yet they want to render all these opinions as to how much treatment and what type of treatment you should have actually received, but it’s just another trick.
Another trick the insurance companies use is to go ahead and try to cut your medical expenses. They want a nickel and dime and penny pinch on any medical treatment that you receive. You have to remember they’re in it for one thing, profit. What that means is that if they can go ahead and save $2,000 on your claim as far as your medical expenses, they’re in good shape. They do that on millions and millions of claims per year, guess what? They have very happy stockholders at the end of the year.
What’s another trick the insurance companies use? Well, a lot of times they will just flat-out lie to you as to how much insurance there is available in the case. Their driver might, in fact, have $200,000 of insurance coverage but when you call them up on the phone, that representative is somehow mysteriously going to tell you that there’s only $100,000 worth of coverage. That’s another trick and the only way that trick is usually discovered is if your lawyer goes ahead and files a lawsuit and asks for that information through a certain formalized procedure, and so sometimes it’s necessary to hire a lawyer for that reason.
Another trick the insurance companies will use is to simply act like your friend. They may show up at your house, ask you to sign certain forms which you always want to be careful of because you don’t know what you’re signing away as far as your rights, and they may even offer to go ahead and pay all of your future medical bills. That’s really just a tactic to stop you from hiring a lawyer.
Now they will pay your medical bills to a certain point, but when their computer system tells them that your claim is costing them too much, guess what happens? They won’t pay your medical bills anymore and at that point, a lot of times you’ll need to retain a lawyer, unless of course you’ve signed the forms that they’ve already given to you. If you have any questions about tricks that the insurance companies use, please call me at 770-792-1000. I’ll be happy to speak to you.