I’m not talking about your personal finances when referring to your safety net. What I am talking about is the fact that most people don’t have sufficient insurance coverage to pay for their medical bills should they be involved in auto accident.
Millions of people drive uninsured in United States. Yes, Millions. Even more than that drive underinsured. Chances are, you are one of those underinsured drivers. The kind of insurance I am referring to is called Uninsured / Underinsured Motorist Coverage. It’s the safety net that is supposed to cover your medical expenses in cases where the other driver is either underinsured or is uninsured completely.
If you live in states like Mississippi, New Mexico, Florida, Oklahoma and Tennessee, your odds of running into an uninsured person are significantly higher. In Mississippi, nearly 28% of all drivers are uninsured. If you do the math, that’s around 835,000 people. What are the chances of you running into one of these people? – Pretty high.
Nationwide 1 in 7 drivers is uninsured according to USA Today. This is an alarming number, considering the cost of hospital stay, rehabilitation and time missed from work. Yet, people are not too concerned. When shopping for car insurance we look at our premium as the starting basis upon which we make our decision. This is simply the wrong way to choose car insurance. Hospital bills can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes even hundreds of thousands depending upon the type of injury sustained.
What should people do to protect themselves and their families? Ask any car accident lawyer in Los Angeles and you’ll be given this advice: Buy the most coverage that you can afford. This includes purchasing the highest amount of uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage that you can possibly afford to pay for. The state of California bears its own 15% uninsured motorist rate, where motorists hear all too often the same advice of getting more coverage over and over.
Why the urgent message? Some injuries such as those of the brain can cost upwards of several million dollars in lifetime care expenses. No insurance company will cover the cost of such accidents therefore the best you can do is buy the most coverage you can afford to mitigate as much expense as possible.
Don’t jeopardize your safety net by having no uninsured motorist coverage. Since such coverage is often not mandatory, you would be at a huge loss in an event of an accident with someone who has no insurance. Any sound attorney will give you the same advice free of charge because the urgency of this message is yet to catch up with most of us who seek minimum premium payments over coverage.