After a serious accident, financial demands can add up quickly. Medical bills arrive before your injuries even begin to heal, and the settlement process often moves slower than your recovery. Between hospital charges, diagnostic tests, surgical procedures, physical therapy, and additional therapies, it doesn’t take long for the numbers to become too much, especially when health insurers or auto insurance providers come calling for repayment from your personal injury settlement.
So, can a personal injury attorney help reduce your medical expenses? Yes. While your attorney can’t force a hospital or insurer to lower what they charge, there are things they may be able to do to cut down what you owe, so you keep more of your accident settlement.
How Medical Bills Impact Your Settlement
When you’ve been injured in a preventable accident, medical treatment is often the most expensive part of your personal injury claim. ER visits, imaging, surgery, and follow-up care can rack up tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of weeks. In theory, any insurance settlement or verdict from a personal injury lawsuit should cover all necessary treatment related to your injuries, but in practice, things rarely go that smoothly.
Even if your health insurance provider pays for your treatment up front, that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. Most health insurers retain what's known as a subrogation right. This gives the insurer a legal claim to reimbursement from your settlement proceeds for the medical expenses they’ve already covered.
In Georgia, subrogation is allowed under both contract law and statutory law. If your health insurance provider is governed by state law (non-ERISA), O.C.G.A. § 33-24-56.1 may apply. This statute limits a health insurer’s right to reimbursement unless the injured party is “made whole,” meaning their total losses are fully compensated by the accident injury settlement or judgment.
If your recovery doesn’t cover all your damages, including pain and suffering, lost wages, and ongoing treatment, then the insurer may not be entitled to collect anything at all. That gives your attorney leverage to negotiate or eliminate repayment demands.
However, this process is different if your health insurance is governed by ERISA, a federal law that often applies to employer-provided plans. ERISA preempts state “made whole” rules and gives these plans more aggressive recovery rights. Still, that doesn’t mean their claim can’t be reduced. Your attorney can analyze the insurance policy language for weaknesses or omissions and, in many cases, argue that the care plan should bear part of the cost of securing the recovery (known as the common fund doctrine).
On the provider side, hospitals and medical professionals in Georgia may choose to treat injured patients on a lien basis. Under O.C.G.A. § 44-14-470, medical providers can file a lien against your personal injury claim to recover the cost of services. But to enforce that lien, they must follow strict notice and filing requirements, including sending notice to you and your attorney and recording the lien in the appropriate county. If they fail to comply with these additional steps, the lien may be invalid, and you may not have to pay it.
Even when liens are valid, they’re not set in stone. Your attorney can challenge excessive charges, negotiate fair reductions, and ensure the provider isn’t demanding repayment for services unrelated to the accident. This is especially important in cases without adequate insurance coverage. For example, if an at-fault driver only has Georgia’s minimum liability coverage of $25,000 and your medical treatment costs are $50,000, blindly paying lien claims without negotiation could leave you in a difficult financial situation.
How Can a Personal Injury Attorney Help Lower What You Owe?
Personal injury attorneys in Georgia routinely negotiate medical expenses and insurance reimbursements on behalf of their clients. While they can't demand that a provider or insurer reduce their fees by law, they can build a strong argument for doing so, and in many cases, they succeed. Here’s how:
- Audit Every Bill: Medical invoices often contain duplicate charges, billing code inaccuracies, unnecessary treatments, and other billing errors. An experienced attorney will review each charge for accuracy and challenge anything that inflates the bill without medical justification.
- Challenge Excessive Liens: Providers may file liens against your case, but Georgia law requires them to follow specific procedures. If they don't, or if the charges are unreasonable, your attorney can push back and negotiate a lower payment.
- Negotiate With Subrogation Carriers: Health insurance companies and auto insurers asserting subrogation rights aren’t always entitled to the full amount they paid. Georgia law allows attorneys to argue for reductions based on common fund doctrine, unjust enrichment, or the overall fairness of the distribution.
- Leverage the Settlement Timeline: If a skilled attorney is involved early, they can negotiate bill reductions in parallel with your case, rather than waiting until after the money arrives. This often creates more flexibility and better results in this challenging situation.
Negotiating Medical Bills After Settlement
Many people don’t realize that medical bills can be negotiated even after a legal settlement is finalized. Once your case resolves, healthcare providers, hospitals, and insurance adjusters often send final reimbursement demands. These are not set in stone.
Medical care bills don’t stop being negotiable just because your case has settled. In Georgia, once a personal injury settlement is finalized, providers and insurers often submit final requests for reimbursement. These requests are typically based on the total medical charges or amounts paid, but they’re not fixed and may be negotiated.
An experienced personal injury attorney will review these post-settlement demands in detail. If a significant portion is allocated to attorney’s fees, case costs, or other liens, your attorney can use that distribution to argue that reimbursing the full amount of the medical bills would leave you with little or no recovery. That’s especially relevant when total damages far exceed available insurance coverage.
For example, if your injuries are worth $150,000 but the at-fault party only carried $25,000 in liability coverage, your attorney can demonstrate that the insurance settlement doesn't fully compensate you. This triggers a legal argument under Georgia’s “made whole” doctrine for non-ERISA plans: until you're fully compensated, the insurer may not be entitled to any reimbursement.
Hospitals and providers who treated you on a lien basis may also be open to reductions when it's clear the lien amount exceeds your maximum compensation. Your attorney can present evidence of financial strain, limited recovery funds, or competing medical liens from other parties. In some cases, they’ll use actual itemized medical billing records to show inflated charges or non-accident-related services that should be excluded.
Post-settlement medical bill negotiation is about documentation and leverage. Your attorney uses billing records, plan language, lien statutes, and case outcomes to reduce what you owe and protect your net recovery. Without this crucial step, you risk handing over a large part of your settlement to providers and insurers, even when the law allows for less.
What About Subrogation?
Subrogation is a legal concept that can catch many accident victims off guard. When your health insurer or auto insurance company pays your medical bills following an accident, they often gain the right to be reimbursed from any settlement you receive. In Georgia, this is standard practice, particularly with:
- Employer-sponsored health plans
- Personal Injury Protection (PIP) benefits
- MedPay coverage
- Government programs like Medicaid and Medicare
But having subrogation rights doesn’t mean the insurer automatically gets every dollar back. Your attorney can negotiate subrogation claims using several approaches:
- Equitable Arguments: If paying the subrogation claim would result in you receiving little or nothing from the settlement, courts may reduce the reimbursement on fairness grounds.
- Common Fund Doctrine: This legal principle requires insurers to pay a share of your legal fees if they benefit from your attorney’s work recovering the funds. In many cases, this reduces the amount they can claim for compensation.
- ERISA Plan Review: If your insurance is governed by federal law (ERISA), your attorney will need to analyze the plan language closely. Some ERISA plans have airtight reimbursement clauses, while others have room for negotiation.
This is not a legal process you want to handle alone. Missing deadlines or failing to notify the right parties can jeopardize your legal rights or give insurers leverage to demand full repayment without negotiation.
Providers Can (and Often Will) Negotiate
Hospitals, surgical centers, and specialists in Georgia are often willing to accept less than the full amount billed, especially when the chances of full recovery are low. Medical providers know that pursuing the full balance after a personal injury settlement can result in delayed payments, partial collections, or nothing at all if the patient lacks insurance or assets like real property.
This is particularly true in three common scenarios:
- The Patient Has Little or No Health Insurance: Without a contract in place, providers often charge “rack rates,” which are higher than negotiated insurance rates. But these inflated bills rarely get paid in full, and providers know it. Rather than chase a balance the patient can’t afford, many will settle for a reduced, lump-sum payment through the personal injury case.
- The Treatment Was Provided on a Lien: In Georgia, medical providers can treat accident patients on a lien basis and assert a claim against the settlement But medical liens aren’t guarantees of full payment: if the amount exceeds the net proceeds available, your attorney can present a case for a reduction by showing the provider’s share would leave little or nothing for the injured party. Providers understand that accepting a fair percentage of the recovery is better than walking away empty-handed.
- The At-Fault Party Has Minimal Auto Insurance Coverage: If the defendant only carried Georgia’s minimum $25,000 liability limit and your medical bills exceed that amount, providers know the case has a financial ceiling. Your attorney can present a full breakdown of the insurance claim settlement and the total amount available to pay liens. With a clear view of the numbers, most providers will negotiate to secure a reasonable portion rather than hold out for more than the case can deliver.
What You Can Do Right Now
If you're facing mounting medical bills from an accident that wasn’t your fault, don’t wait for the settlement check to start having conversations about what you owe. Start with these steps:
- Keep Detailed Records: Save all hospital invoices, medical records, explanation of benefits (EOBs), and correspondence from your health or auto insurer. These documents will be central to any successful negotiation.
- Avoid Direct Payments: Before you start writing checks or setting up payment plans, talk to your attorney. Some of these bills may not need to be paid in full (or at all), depending on your case strategy.
- Be Cautious With Liens: If a provider asks you to sign a lien or assignment of benefits, understand what you're agreeing to. These documents can give them direct access to your settlement, sometimes with little room for negotiation later.
- Involve an Attorney Early: The sooner your legal team is involved, the more influence they have over how medical expenses are tracked, handled, and reduced.
A Strong Legal Strategy Means a Stronger Recovery
At The Champion Firm, we don’t stop at getting you fair compensation: we fight to make sure you keep as much of it as possible. Our Marietta personal injury attorneys have negotiated with every major insurer and hospital group in Georgia. We know how billing works, what charges are inflated, and how to push back when providers or insurers overreach.
If you’ve been injured and need help protecting your financial recovery from healthcare costs or subrogation claims, we’re ready to stand with you. Call us today at 404-800-4635 for a free consultation with our experienced team. Let’s talk about your case, your potential options, and how we can help you move forward without unnecessary medical debt.
