Optimizing your insurance coverage

The book is not just for people who have injury claims and one of the decisions I’ve already made is in the next printing the subtitle of the book will not be simple steps to protect your family after an accident it will be simple steps to protect your family before and after an accident the first third of the book is so and I hand books I’ve handed my book to people in this room today and they’ve said oh I don’t need that I don’t have an injury claim and I have to explain you do need it because someday you might and if you wait until that happens before you learn these things it’s gonna be too late you need to empower yourself with this information now and the first thing is optimizing your insurance coverage people walk into my office literally somebody walks into my office every week to meet with me and see if they have a case that I can help them with and I asked them about their insurance coverage they say oh I have anybody well I guess full coverage I have full coverage I’m covered I have really good insurance my agents a great guy a full coverage let me tell you there is no such thing as full coverage it doesn’t exist if you call your agent and say mr. insurance agent I would like full coverage please he won’t know what you’re talking about because there’s no such thing as full coverage you have to go through each item of insurance your liability your personal injury protection your uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage you need to go through your rental car insurance your medpay coverage you need to go through all of these things and you need to know what they are and the other thing is and I’ll tell you this the law in Washington says everyone who’s driving needs a minimum of twenty five thousand dollars of liability insurance first thing is $25,000 nothing if you’re seriously hurt in an accident that’s gone in the first two hours but besides that twenty percent of the drivers on the road in Washington don’t have liability insurance at all it’s up to you to protect yourself with uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage and again you could get twenty five thousand but I’m telling you it’s not enough and the difference between the minimum and the maximum of insurance that you can get for yourself in the premium cost is so small that it’s crazy not to do it, it’s crazy not to do it and really I recommend it in my book a minimum of a hundred per accident – I mean 100 per individual two hundred thousand per incident I’m upping that now the difference in premium between that and five hundred thousand to protect you if you’re hurt by a drunk driver who doesn’t have insurance is a dollar a month maybe two dollars a month I urge you all if you learn nothing else tonight go home pull out the declaration page from your auto insurance and see what your uninsured and underinsured motorist motorist coverage is call your agent or your insurance company tomorrow and bump it up to the max at least ask how much it will cost for you to do that because I’m telling you it’s pennies and if something happens you’ll be so grateful that you had it I met a woman a few months ago she was driving home in Mukilteo and somebody a drunk driver crossed the center line and hit her head on and she was hurt really badly she spent a long time in Harborview and had multiple surgeries and she had hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills and she had $25,000 of uninsured motorist coverage and I sat down and met with her and her husband and they couldn’t believe what I was telling them what do you mean that all I could get is $25,000 we’ve got all these bills and yeah we have insurance they had medical insurance but there were co-pays and deductibles their out-of-pocket was huge but besides that the impact on their lives her ability to care for their children the effect on their marriage the pain she would go through for years you’re telling me all we can get his twenty five thousand dollars well the woman who hit them didn’t have anything and she didn’t have any insurance so yes I’m telling you all you can get is twenty five thousand dollars I’m sorry I could represent you but you don’t need me they’ll write you a check for $25,000 today I hate having those conversations with people but it happens all the time I recently over the last year well I’ve represented several people who’ve been in motorcycle accidents and motorcycle wrecks are some of the worst they don’t have the metal and the frame of the car to protect them and the injuries can be devastating these four cases all of them were different injuries but they were all devastating and each one had a different configuration of insurance some didn’t have any insurance at all there was a woman who had a broken pelvis she had an external exoskeleton built around her pelvis to hold the bones in place while they could heal she was told she could never have children again she had no insurance the kid who hit her at $25,000 of insurance we actually negotiated with this guy, this seventeen year old kid and his grandfather to get her more money on a payment plan but they defaulted two months into it we had to send them to somebody to try and collect and I don’t think she ever saw a penny of it you know the next one didn’t have any insurance either he had health insurance but it wasn’t very good but fortunately the guy who hit him had a high liability limit so the problem for him was how does he get the treatment he needs until the liability insurance will pay him because they only pay one time at the end so who’s gonna pay his bills well we were able to work with his providers and get those bills paid but it didn’t have to be that way and ultimately we got him a good recovery you know the next person had personal injury protection insurance and uninsured motorist coverage but it was a low liability policy so we got the bills paid as he went until the personal injury protection was exhausted but we were able to go and when we exhausted the other guys insurance he had that uim to protect him that uninsured motorist there’s a thousand stories like this a lot of them are in the book and I really don’t want to bore you with this the point is it’s not on anyone else to protect you if you’re in an accident it’s on you and if you wait until you’ve been in an accident it’s too late there’s something else you can do before you’re ever in an accident and that’s know what to do.