The Smallest Coverage on Your Policy Might Be the Most Civilized
By The NMH Agency Team, Licensed Agent
On every homeowners declarations page, below the big dwelling and
liability numbers, sits a modest line most people have never consciously
purchased: medical payments to others, usually $1,000 to $5,000. Auto
policies carry a sibling: medical payments (MedPay), often $1,000 to
$10,000. These are the smallest numbers on your policies, they cost
almost nothing, and they exist for a genuinely wise reason that, once
understood, usually convinces people to double them. Here’s the case for
the little coverage.
What it does: pays first,
argues never
Medical payments coverage pays reasonable medical bills for
people injured in your orbit, without any determination of
fault. The dinner guest who slips on your steps, the neighbor
kid who breaks a wrist in your yard, the friend’s finger and your car
door: MedPay simply pays the urgent care bill, the X-ray, the follow-up,
up to its limit, no lawsuit required, no negligence admitted, no fault
assigned.
Contrast the alternative machinery. Your liability
coverage, the big number, pays injured parties only when you’re
legally responsible, which means claims, adjusters, fault
investigations, and, often enough, attorneys: the full apparatus, aimed
at your friends. Medical payments coverage is the pressure valve that
keeps small injuries from entering that apparatus at all. The neighbor
with a $2,400 ER bill and a MedPay check in hand rarely calls a lawyer;
the same neighbor told “prove we were negligent” sometimes does, and
small liability claims that lawyer up stop being small. Insurers like
MedPay for exactly this reason, and so should you: it’s lawsuit
prevention sold by the thousand dollars.
Worth knowing: it covers others, not your household; your family’s
injuries at home run through your health insurance. And it follows your
premises and activities in defined ways: the classic uses are guests at
home and, notably, incidents involving your pets away from home.
The auto version,
and its state-shaped cousin
Auto MedPay covers medical bills for you and
your passengers after a crash, regardless of fault, promptly,
before the fault fight resolves. Its value depends on what else you
carry: in no-fault states with PIP (personal injury
protection: the broader, often mandatory version covering medical costs,
lost wages, and more), MedPay is supplemental or redundant; in tort
states without PIP, MedPay is the only no-fault medical layer available,
and it earns its keep in two specific gaps: passengers (your health
insurance covers you, not your carpool; MedPay covers everyone in the
car) and health-plan cost-sharing (deductibles and copays after a wreck,
which MedPay can absorb). For households with high-deductible health
plans, or anyone who regularly drives other people’s children, the case
for a few thousand dollars of MedPay is strong and the premium is coffee
money.
The fine-print notes: MedPay coordinates with health insurance
differently by state and policy (who pays first varies), it typically
has no deductible of its own, and limits are per person, per incident,
so a carful of passengers multiplies its usefulness.
Setting the numbers
like an adviser would
Defaults here are historical artifacts: $1,000 guest medical was set
in an era when an ER visit cost what a nice dinner does now. Today a
single urgent-care-plus-imaging episode clears $1,000 easily, which
mutes the coverage’s entire lawsuit-preventing purpose. Our standing
suggestion: raise homeowners medical payments to $5,000 (the typical
maximum offered), and consider auto MedPay at $5,000-plus in non-PIP
states, both of which usually cost a few dollars a year per step.
Households with elevated guest traffic, pools, trampolines, playdates,
the porch where the neighborhood gathers, and anyone with dogs (bites
away from home are a MedPay classic) get the most value per dollar of
anyone.
To be clear about what this doesn’t replace: MedPay is the
small-injury valve, not the serious-injury answer; the big liability
limits and the umbrella policy remain the load-bearing walls (their
articles are elsewhere in this library). Think of it as the coverage
that handles the injuries you’ll actually see in a normal decade, the
sprains and stitches of ordinary hospitality, while the big coverages
wait for the day you hope never comes. Civilized, cheap, and two clicks
to upgrade: that’s the whole pitch.
Never looked at your medical payments lines? Call 800.388.6780 or
request a review and we’ll bump them while
you’re on the phone. It’s the fastest upgrade in insurance.