Medical payments coverage, or MedPay, is a type of auto insurance coverage. It’s optional in most states that offer it. It pays for your medical bills or funeral costs if you’re in a car accident, either as a driver or a passenger. This coverage extends to your passengers as well.1
MedPay covers you regardless of who caused the accident. Unlike health insurance, medical payments coverage doesn’t have any deductibles or copays; it covers all your costs up to a certain limit for injuries related to the accident.
Learn more here about how MedPay works, if it’s right for you, and how to find affordable car insurance for your needs.
MedPay covers medical expenses in the immediate aftermath of an accident. It pays for healthcare costs related to injuries you experience in a crash, up to the policy limits. Typically, this type of coverage pays for care for you and any passengers in your vehicle who incur an injury in an accident, regardless of who caused the crash. It even applies when you’re a passenger in someone else’s car at the time of the incident.
Your medical payments coverage can pay for expenses related to the following:
Doctor appointments and office visits
Emergency room stays
Hospital admission or out-patient services
Ambulance or EMT fees
Nursing care
Diagnostic procedures, such as X-rays, CT scans, and other imaging
Medical procedures, including surgery
Funeral expenses
If you have health insurance, MedPay will cover copays and co-insurance costs that you would otherwise be responsible for.
MedPay doesn’t cover all of your accident-related expenses or the damages you cause others. Here are some examples of car accident losses this policy doesn’t pay for:
Injuries you cause to other drivers and their passengers in an at-fault accident (your bodily injury liability insurance would pay for those losses)
Lost wages you experience as a result of your injuries
Compensation for pain and suffering you experience as a result of your injuries
Losses in excess of policy limits (medical bills above your coverage amount)
MedPay and personal injury protection (PIP) are both types of auto insurance that pay for medical bills. PIP coverage provides more protection, and more states require drivers to purchase it.
PIP coverage pays for medical bills or funeral costs up to your coverage limits for you, eligible family members, or passengers in your vehicle, regardless of who caused the accident. It also covers partial lost wages if your accident-related injuries stop you from working, which MedPay doesn’t offer.
MedPay doesn’t typically affect your ability to make a claim against another driver who injured you, but PIP can.
Very few states require MedPay, so you can usually decide if you need the coverage on your auto insurance policy and how much to purchase.
The following states require MedPay:
Maine
New Hampshire
Pennsylvania (if you opt out of PIP)
These states don’t offer MedPay:
Minnesota
New York
North Dakota
Oregon
In all other states, MedPay is an optional coverage.
States with mandatory PIP coverage, called no-fault states, require you to rely on PIP coverage to pay for your injuries even if another driver caused the accident. In a few “choice” no-fault states, you have the option to opt out of this coverage and recover your ability to make a claim against at-fault drivers.2
The following states require PIP coverage:
Arkansas
Delaware
Florida
Hawaii
Kansas
Kentucky (choice no-fault)
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
New Jersey (choice no-fault)
New York
North Dakota
Oregon
Pennsylvania (choice no-fault)
Texas
Utah
PIP coverage is optional in the following places:
New Hampshire
South Dakota
Virginia
Washington
Washington, D.C.
Wisconsin
Most insurance companies allow you to set your coverage limits for MedPay between $1,000 and $10,000, but specifics can vary by insurer.
If you live in a state that requires MedPay, make sure you buy at least the amount of protection required by law. For example, Maine requires a minimum of $2,000 in MedPay coverage.3
If your state doesn’t require MedPay but you want to purchase this coverage as part of your auto insurance policy anyway, consider buying enough coverage to pay for your health insurance deductible or an equal amount to the maximum out-of-pocket costs set by your health insurer.
Maximum out-of-pocket costs are the most you’d have to pay for all in-network and out-of-network care during the year.4 Your deductible is the amount you must pay for each covered service before insurance kicks in. If you want to avoid paying for care costs related to your accident, you should buy coverage equal to your out-of-pocket limits.
Still have questions about medical payments coverage? Here’s what you should know to help you decide if adding this coverage to your policy is a smart choice.
Bodily injury liability coverage pays for losses you cause to others in an at-fault car accident. It doesn’t pay for your own medical expenses for accident-related injuries. Medical payments coverage pays for your necessary medical care after an accident, no matter who caused the crash. It doesn’t pay for the harm you cause to others.
Medical payment insurance pays for healthcare costs after an accident. It can cover things like a health insurance deductible and copays. If you can’t afford to pay out-of-pocket costs of medical care after a car accident, you may want to buy medical payments insurance.
Medical payments insurance is an optional add-on to auto insurance coverage in most states. It covers you, your insured family members, and passengers in your car in case of an accident. No matter who’s at fault, it’ll pay for your medical bills resulting from the crash, up to policy limits.
You can file with your own auto insurer to pay your medical bills after an accident only if you have medical payments or PIP coverage. In most states, if someone else caused the crash, you can make a claim with their insurer, and their bodily injury liability policy should cover your costs.
Like with any insurance claim, you must let your insurer know about the accident and the damages you’ve suffered. Each insurer has its own process for claims. Often, you’ll need to call the phone number on the back of your insurance card or initiate a claim using your insurer’s app or website.
At Insurify, our goal is to help customers compare insurance products and find the best policy for them. We strive to provide open, honest, and unbiased information about the insurance products and services we review. Our hard-working team of data analysts, insurance experts, insurance agents, editors and writers, has put in thousands of hours of research to create the content found on our site.
We do receive compensation when a sale or referral occurs from many of the insurance providers and marketing partners on our site. That may impact which products we display and where they appear on our site. But it does not influence our meticulously researched editorial content, what we write about, or any reviews or recommendations we may make. We do not guarantee favorable reviews or any coverage at all in exchange for compensation.
)
Licensed auto and home insurance agent
3+ years experience in insurance and personal finance editing
NPN: 20564519
Featured in
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)