Why Most Medical Malpractice Victims Never Recover a Dime - Part 9

Beware of the Subrogation "Monster"

You should be aware that often, if your bills were paid by the health insurance of an employer's health plan or your loss of income was paid by a disability insurance plan, the insurance company or plan may want you to reimburse it out of any personal injury recovery. Your "insurance" turns out to be not insurance at all, but a "loan." What the insurance companies don't tell you is that this area of law, known as "reimbursement" or "subrogation," is actually quite complicated and the law frequently goes against what they are claiming. We have frequently been successfully in substantially reducing these "subrogation" claims.

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In this book I refer to "the insurance company", but it is important to understand that over 95% of doctors are "insured" by a mutual defence organization, the Canadian Medical Protective Association, or CMPA. This is important because the mandate of this large and powerful organization is to defend its doctor members, not to settle legitimate claims. CMPA has enormous resources and a war chest of two billion dollars, which it uses to fight the more than 100 trials it defends each year in Canada - and it wins at trial 80% of the time.

The master skill of the best plaintiff malpractice lawyers lies in identifying the cases which have potential to be turned into winners. The master skill of the CMPA and their very smart defence lawyers lies in recognizing which cases they are likely to lose at trial, and should therefore settle.