In Florida, a lien is a legal claim placed on a personal injury settlement by a health care provider, insurer, or government agency to recover the cost of your treatment that they have paid for. Liens ensure that reimbursement for payment for treatment is made once your case is resolved, and they reduce your settlement net recovery.
In terms of a health care provider lien, liens are also unpaid medical bills that are agreed to be paid by the personal injury settlement in what’s called a letter of protection.
In terms of insurer liens, here we are talking about health insurance liens generally. Generally, health insurance policies carry subrogation provisions that say that if the health insurer pays medical bills that are related to an accident AND if you recover money for the accident, you have to repay the health insurance back for what they paid.
In terms of government agency liens, we are generally talking about medicare or medicaid liens. Similar to health insurance liens, except these liens derive from statutes and not from contract but basically work similar to health insurance liens. So when our clients have medicare or medicaid and those entities have paid medical bills related to the accident, we have to pay them back.
As your lawyer, we attempt to get these liens reduced as the more they are reduced, the more the client gets in their pocket.
