some questions I need answers for

[mickeym]

As they're relevant to my Big Bang. Anyone who can answer these will have my undying devotion :)

Life Insurance: in the event of a death (auto accident, not the policy holder's fault), how soon would the named beneficiary receive the payout? Is it paid as a lump sum, or in installments? Are taxes taken out of it, or does the beneficiary have to take care of that?

Auto Insurance: how would this work, if it's the fault of the other party? Would that party's insurance contact the survivors of the accident, or do the survivors have to do the contacting? Presumably doctor bills, etc., would be either paid up front or reimbursed by the party at fault?

Medical: you have a 16yr old brought to your ER. Both parents are dead; nearest surviving relative is on the way, but not expected for several hours. Patient is bleeding internally, in addition to a broken leg and assorted contusions, etc. Would the doctors take the patient into surgery w/out a signed consent form, rather than risk patient's life further? Or would they be forced to wait? Could the emergency (non-relative) contact give prelim consent for the surgery?

Any help is greatly appreciated :)

Comments

[umbo.livejournal.com]

Don't know about the first couple questions, really, but I can answer the last one. If the 16 year old's life is at risk, they'd go ahead and operate without consent, just as they would with an adult who's unconscious or otherwise unable to give consent.

[mickeym.livejournal.com]

Thank you! :)

[rainbow.livejournal.com]

When my mother died I received her small life insurance payout as a lump sum and it only took a few weeks to receive it. I was responsible for the taxes on it.

Auto insurance I don't know about.

Medical: in the 80s in Calif (when my mother worked in an ER) all patients were stabilised when they were brought in from auto accidents via ambulance even if they were underage. They did not wait to find someone to sign a consent form first because waiting could be deadly to a patient who wasn't stabilised.

But it may vary by state or it may be different now. (I hope it's not; for many injuries the length of time before treatment strongly impacts the chance for survival.)

[mickeym.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks :) And I'm taking a certain amount of literary license with this, in any case. But it's good to have some background facts/info :)

[janissa11.livejournal.com]

I can't touch the life insurance thing -- no idea.

With auto insurance, generally it's a reimbursement thing. So let's say the victims are treated at the ER and released -- their best bet is to go self-pay and let their agent, and the agent for the at-fault party, know about the impending claim. I honestly don't know for sure, but I suspect the notifying would best be done by surviving family -- get the police report number, all that. Police will give that to any surviving victims right there.

I imagine some providers accept liability as a valid form of coverage, but speaking very generally, hospitals don't like to go third-party coverage. So in an ER setting, advised to go self pay (any part of the claim that isn't covered by liability can be filed with the victim's health insurance secondary, if they have any), and in an elective setting (subsequent tests, surgeries), there would need to be some serious authorizations in place for a hospital to take the patient without cash on the barrel.

If the kid's parents both died in the accident and there's no family available, no one is going to delay treatment, esp. if the kid's condition is critical. He or she would get the treatment/surgery/etc., while staff and local law enforcement look high and low for family or legal guardians. Everything can be updated later, from family and contacts to insurance.

Hope that helps!

[mickeym.livejournal.com]

They'll have whatever health insurance John had for the family, and just go from there *g* I just wanted to get a solid base of facts before I went any further, y'know? They have the emergency contact who then contacts Dean, and so on.

Thanks, Emmers :)

[munibunny.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... Okay, it's been about 5 years since my dad passed so let me think... It takes about 2 weeks to receive copies of the Death Certificate. I can't remember who asked for copies but I had to send out MANY so I'm thinking the insurance company asked for one too. It seems like the check came within 8-12 weeks. I'm not positive because there were just so many things that needed to be taken care of, insurance was kinda the last thing on my mind. I do remember that it was long after the funeral and my relatives went home.

I think I remember being asked to fill out a form about having the taxes withheld. Not sure about that, though.

[mickeym.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the insurance isn't going to be high on Dean's list of things to worry about, either, but I wanted some background facts before I moved ahead.

Thanks, honey :)

[sonnygrl11.livejournal.com]

I'm not on your Flist, but I'm here and I have some answers--mainly to two of your topics...

LIFE INSURANCE - I was the beneficiary of my mother's life insurance payout... it came to me within weeks of me organizing her estate with her "money guy" (financial advisor)--this is who held her life insurance... I received a lump sum payment in the form of a check, which I took to the bank to deposit. No, NO TAXES are taken out--beneficiary payout is exempt from taxes, but you do have to file them at the end of the year. You won't get fined at this point unless the cash payout you received is above an allotted amount all US Citizens are given. I can't recall what that amount is, but I seem to recall it's around $75,000. It may have changed or will change as the years roll on and rules ebb-n-flow.

But you also have to consider that I had it fairly easy with my mother's estate. I only have an older brother and he didn't want any of this cash (though we did use half to buy a house) since he got our mother's Stock Portfolio money. I had no one contesting her will, the estate or the cash payout sum. You may have several siblings who fight over this money and well, things won't go as planned. It's best, or hopeful, that the person who is settling the decedent's estate IS the actual beneficiary of the money, so that THEY (one person or however many was decided) do not fight over who gets all the money...

MEDICAL : Hmm... I've worked in a hospital setting for most of my working life and every scenario is different though there are rules and regulations to follow, each hospital facility will be different. Your ideal scenario is to have an Emergency Contact or the party who will be held responsible or become the guardian once the air clears right there in town. But sometimes that's not the case. If it is a life or death situation, I would assume that it ends up being in the hands of the doctor to make the snap decision that he HAS to save his patient's life... he'll deal with the fallout later. There have been cases of "verbal consent" over the phone--I know that has happened a lot of times when nothing can be done.

Like I said, it really depends on the facility you work for or under. Sometimes a doctor or a nurse will just fly by the seat of their pants and fudge information or a signature... or just take the risk and suffer later.

I said I could only answer two but I can almost tell you that if there is a two car accident or a single car who has caused a multiple car accident... it is always going to be the responsibility of the driver at fault's insurance company to handle everything. Most times, the other driver (or drivers) do NOT get directly involved... you let the insurance companies duke it out to the finish. You will hear about all that is happening or transpiring later. Most insurance companies want their drivers to have "good records", so they will go to bat for you and sometimes they are the only ones who know what they're doing.

I think that would be where "doctor bills and etc" would come in... the Insurance Comp will know how to handle things, so you don't have to. All you might get is just a paperwork trail or many phone calls telling you what's going on, how far along your insurance company has gone and where things are at.

hope that helped a little bit...
hugs...SONNY

[mickeym.livejournal.com]

That helps a lot, thank you! I'll be taking a bit of literary license in any case, but I wanted some solid facts behind it all, first.

Thanks! :)

[sonnygrl11.livejournal.com]

Oh, you're welcome. I completely understand what you're doing. I do copious amounts of research beforehand, only ending up using it as a sculpted background for my "poetic license" as a writer with an idea.

Stuff changes, too, so you can even make it all up and still get away with a helluva lot, as long as you can defend yourself and your choices.

If you need anymore sounding board kind of help, like this, keep me in mind. I'm always willing to help out a fellow fan and writer...:O)

hugs...SONNY
*rushing off to write J2 p0rn*

[azephirin.livejournal.com]

For the first question, someone would have to send the insurance company a copy of the death certificate (and probably some sort of paperwork). Usually the payout is pretty quick, I think, probably a month or two at the outside. I'm pretty sure it's paid as a lump sum, and it's not taxable.

I'm not sure about the specifics of auto insurance in terms of who contacts whom, but not all policies have coverage for medical bills (mine does, pretty substantially, because we'd just done a bunch of personal-injury cases in Torts class when I took out the policy!), and there's typically a limit, which often isn't very high (people decrease it to try to get their premiums down). OTOH, if the accident victims had health insurance, that would probably be the primary method of covering hospital expenses (you might end up with a situation where the victim's health insurer sues the at-fault party's auto insurer to recoup, but that's probably more legalities than are necessary here).

Oh, and as several people have said, the hospital would absolutely go ahead and treat the kid in an emergency situation. If the next-of-kin was reachable by phone, somebody would probably try to do that just to have it on record, but the priority would be stabilizing and treating the injured person. (For adults, if the person is unconscious, the law assumes that they would want to have life-saving treatment. For a minor, I would guess that the legal assumption is similar: that the parents would want their child to have life-saving treatment.)

[mickeym.livejournal.com]

Thanks, darlin' :) yeah, they have health insurance...and beyond that, I may not even mention (or worry about!), it's just good to have some solid facts in hand before I start playing with them *g*

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

The life insurance thing gets very complicated - I've been trying to do some research into that myself, since I want to make sure the beneficiary on my life insurance policy knows what the heck to do with it. Sometimes there are tax penalties for accepting a lump sum payout. There are lots of ways you can get the payout though - annual for a specified period of time is common, I think. You can do pretty neat things with policies before you die, too - say, put a condition on it for a child. Wanna have your grandchild get $10,000 per year until they either graduate college or turn 30, whichever comes first, then they get the whopping remainder of the life insurance payout? You can totes set that up!

Tax issues probably vary based on location, but about everywhere, if you put the payout anywhere it can earn interest/dividends/whatever, you'll be taxed on said interest. Also I believe if you have certain types of policies (e.g., corporate life insurance) with no beneficiary designated beforehand (e.g., you left it blank/had no will, so it ends up going to next of kin or whatever), the payout is taxed pretty heavily.

But, erf. I don't know enough about this yet. Just trying to figure it out. It's excessively complicated. D:

[softbluebuddy.livejournal.com]

Life insurance can pay out relatively quickly if there are no suspicious circumstances. The beneficiary can choose to have a lump sum or they can elect to receive an annuity, which can offer a certain sum periodically for a set number of years or indefinitely. There are no taxes. Sometimes people buy life insurance for the beneficiary to actually pay inheritance taxes for large estates.

Auto insurance depends on the state where the accident occurs. Different states have different insurance statutes. For instance in Calif, if you have insurance, you have MedPay. Your own insurance pays your bills for medical, if it was someone elses fault when you settle up, the at fault party's insurance company reimburses your insurance company and gives you a sum of money. In Oregon, their medical is called PIP-personal injury protection, and it is similar to the MedPay, but also includes a provision for lost wages. Settlement works the same as in Calif. The not at fault driver's insurance company is entitled to be reimbursed for the expenses they pay out on behalf of their insured.

I've never worked in a hospital, but I would think that with the person being in peril, that medical treatment would be rendered regardless of the age of the person.

[leighm.livejournal.com]

If it's emergent for life or death, they can progress and do what needs to be done without consent.

[maerhysetc.livejournal.com]

As Leigh said above, it'd be a trauma situation so they'd do whatever they needed to do to stabilize.