“The insurance company said they’d pay all my medical bills. Now they only want to pay a fraction of what I owe!’ We have heard this complaint almost daily in our decades of practice. What’s the reason and who’s the culprit? Of course, every story like this begins with the fact that car insurance companies are designed to collect premiums and not pay out. But that is not the only conspiracy happening here. Hospitals and medical providers have found ways to use the car insurance system to increase profits, as well. In a recent article in The New York Times, the master plan of hospital billing is broken down into the following steps:
1. Medical Swag
When you are in a wreck, the first thing the EMS or ER staff will do is slap on that age-old neck brace. Often, that neck brace either came free as medical sales swag or was bought in bulk at a rate of a few bucks each. When you get your medical bills in the mail, you find out that your insurance paid $100-plus and you owe an additional $20 bucks or so after insurance. You could get the same brace at your local pharmacy for much less. But when your chart is flagged for a car accident, out comes the medical swag. And in the end, all of this gets paid by the car insurance company… out of your settlement.
2. The Cover Charge
When you are taken to the emergency room, you get a bill. That we know. But did you know that this bill is just for use of the room? In essence, that bill is a “cover charge” for entry. In addition to that fee, which may vary depending on how emergent or traumatic your injury may be, there is a separate fee for every material used and every person who walks into the room. In many cases, you’ll even get a completely separate bill just for the use of a doctor, a necessary component of your emergency room visit. This bill, again, may vary based on what the hospital determines is the severity of your injury. Two guesses what they label car accident victims as in order to increase their bill.
3. Impostor Billing
Not only can you get billed for every person who walks in the room, but you may also receive a bill for people who you have never met. Medical billing allows for “consult billing,” even when the physician never consulted with the patient themselves. If a radiologist simply stops an orthopedist in the hallway for a second look at your x-rays, you get billed. These are not common charges, but we see them often in cases like auto accidents where the hospital anticipates deep pockets.
4. The Drive-By
In more serious cases, where post-ER treatment is required, you can get billed even before your first visit. For instance, if your injury requires physical therapy, a therapist can enter the room just to discuss your future therapy visits, and you will receive a bill for that conversation. A full assessment or actual therapeutic treatment is not required for the hospital to bill for it.
5. Avectus
We have added this prong because it is so prevalent and crushing to your in-pocket compensation while filling the hospital’s bank account. Hospitals allow representatives from Avectus or other lien companies to enter patients’ rooms, although they have no medical training or degrees and have not received consent from the patient or relatives. Their only purpose is to have medicated and shocked accident victims sign forms promising to pay the hospital’s bill in its entirety, regardless of whether they have health insurance. Why? Because the hospital does not want to take the contractual discount with the health insurance, and instead wants to take as much as possible from the auto insurance policy, in addition to all of your other medical bills.
The End Game
Why do we care so much about what the hospital is doing if the car insurance company is paying in the end? Why should you care about what money goes where? An auto insurance policy is like a bank account. Everything that comes out of it – including medical bills – reduces the amount in the account. In other words, every penny the hospital takes is one less for you. If your hospital bill is inflated simply because you were in an auto accident, your compensation for the injuries you sustained will go to the hospital rather than to you. If the auto policy available is only $50,000 and your hospital bill is $40,000, there is very little money left to pay remaining bills, reimburse your lost wages, or cover your future medical needs. And that’s if you don’t come out with a $75,000 bill and only $50,000 in automobile insurance. What can be done to stop this? Short of changing legislation, simply put, you need an attorney. Our office has decades of experience forcing hospitals to use health insurance and refusing to pay their liens if they are on notice and ignore us. We not only fight the insurance company on your behalf, but we also hold the hospitals to a high ethical and economical standard, refusing to let them dig into the policy that was meant to compensate you. Be aware and proactive with your health and your future. Work with a firm that has no blind side. We see the attacks coming, and will head them off at the start.
Require two-wheeled assistance to get around? When it snows, this world is not for you. We all know the feeling of waking up to the gorgeous snow, a feeling that quickly shifts to the grind of warming the car, scraping the windows, and pulling on snow boots over your suit or uniform pants. What we do not all experience is sliding into our wheelchair, looking out the window, and realizing we are stuck. When your wheels are not your alternate method of travel, but are instead are your only vehicle for point A to B travel, even a little snow and ice on the ground can be a hurdle the likes of which champion horses struggle to jump. We’ve all seen the memes of what living on one side of the road versus the other can mean in Colorado when it comes to snow accumulation. Now think differently – think what it means to live in someone else’s shoes… err, wheels.
Even when a sidewalk or ramp has been shoveled, the tiniest patch of ice can send your neighbor slipping into the road, off the path, and into danger. The easiest act for able-bodied folks in the snow is getting to the car. Most of the work is the shoveling, scraping, and salting. When you’re in a chair, none of this is possible. Many people are in wheelchairs because of already complicated health issues, weakened hard and soft tissue structures, and other tenuous health conditions. A fall, especially in the cold, can bring on complications very quickly. Yet so can missing doctor’s appointments or being unable to get to work where money is earned to pay for medical treatment. Whether you’re excited about snow days or grumbling over how the mess on the roads makes a mess of your schedule, pause. Think about whether your neighbors or community members use your sidewalk to get around. Salt it. Think about whether your neighbor is wheelchair bound. Shovel and salt theirs. And if there is anyone in your circle, whether neighborhood, friend, or work life, go clean and scrape their car, shovel and salt their ramp and sidewalk. And while you’re at it, do the same for any older friends or new moms. Bring the family! Make a game out of it! Yes, you’ll be late for work. But you’ll help others get to their jobs, and you’ll save them from harm.
If you haven’t seen the signs or the persistent social media posts about Vision Zero, then you have definitely seen changing road shapes around the Denver Metro area. Extra bike lanes are going in, barriers between motor and bike lanes are building up, speed barriers are popping up, and speed limits are dropping. This is all part of Denver Public Work’s efforts to stamp out traffic collisions and deaths, bringing the later to “Zero.” According to the City and County of Denver, an auto collision has a 40% Chance of causing serious or fatal injury at 30 mph. That stat, however, skyrockets to 73% just by increasing the speed to 40 mph. In the Denver city limits, as of October 12, 63 people have died in collisions, and since 2016, 41% of those were due to speed. Fatalities have continued to increase every single year for the last nine years. Of the 63 fatalities so far this year, 2 were cyclists, 17 were pedestrians, 15 were motorcyclists, and 29 were vehicle occupants.
Denver Vision Zero has set a county-wide goal to have zero traffic deaths by 2030. Rather, though, than simply announce a lofty goal and simply flash stats on overhead announcement boards on the highways, the City and County of Denver have enacted an Action Plan to take proactive steps towards the goal. The first step involved analysis. Vision Zero members analyzed not only fatal collisions themselves looking for causes, but they also constructed a map of the areas within the county lines at which there were serious or fatal collisions over the last six years. You can find this map below or interact by clicking here. You can clearly note roads like Federal, Colfax, and 6th Avenue lighting up like a light-bright as hotbeds for major collisions. In fact, an ancillary map highlighting just the routes labeled High Injury Network zones (HIM), shows that while these roads account for only 5% of Denver streets, the account for 37% of fatal collisions and 40% of serious injuries. And county-wide, motor-vehicle collisions account for twice the number of deaths than homicide. In fact, traffic collisions are the #2 leading cause of hospitalizations in Denver County.
It is also interesting to note that Vision Zero identified that most collisions in these HIN routes are crashes happening near schools and in neighborhoods primarily comprised of lower income, disabled, and elderly citizens. In these areas, speed, aggressive driving, distracted driving, and impaired driving were the top causes of serious and fatal collisions.
What are the next steps in the Action Plan?
The five priorities within the action plan, laid out for the public here, are:
Enhance City Processes and Collaboration
Build Safe Streets for Everyone
Create Safe Speeds
Promote a Culture of Safety
Improve Data and Be Transparent
How does this translate into increased safety and less traffic collisions?
To the city and county government, enhancing city processes and collaboration includes adding departments within local governments focused primarily on traffic safety, including studies, economic appropriation, and governmental reaction to tragedies. And the “building safe streets for everyone” phase is already visible in many neighborhoods. Vision Zero has already begun re-configuring streets and intersections to reduce speed, enhance bicycle and pedestrian detection, and improving light and visibility at crossings. A part of phase two is also significant enough to the effort for Vision Zero to make a separately delineated phase. Creating safer speeds city-wide has begun in several parts, with greater speed enforcement, lower speed limits in neighborhoods and school zones, and street design changes to create safer cycling and walking lanes and force lower speeds for vehicles though the use of barriers and speed bumps.
The next phase seems tricky, and it is the opinion of Queener Law that the city has failed already in some aspects of the promotion of a culture of safety. When e-bikes and scooters hit the streets of Denver, the city was behind the eight-ball with education and regulation. Since then, the city has tripped over itself, releasing multiple complicated ordinances for how these multi-modal measures should interact with other established traffic, and education of the community has failed in spade. Traffic collisions involving scooters and bikes have continued to rise. Vision Zero intends to correct those mistakes, and make better efforts to educate and make available alternate modes of travel outside of driving. It is the opinion of the Vision Zero team that multi-modal methods will not only reduce traffic, but they should also reduce traffic deaths, aggressive and impaired drivers from occupying the road, and give a broad range of safe methods of transportation to the HIN zones.
Finally, Vision Zero does not intend to rest on the current data and act accordingly. They are making a promise to the community to continue the analysis and make honest reports to the public of the successes, failures, or stagnation of their efforts. Many more details of the Action Plan are available here. And Queener Law occupies a position on the Mobility Council for the Downtown Denver Partnership, an organization that tasks itself with advising local leaders of what our community members are thinking and feeling about the government’s actions with regards to safety. Take a look at what the local government has planned for your neighborhood, and let us know your thoughts. Queener Law will take them back to the Partnership and push for the government to be advised. We will ensure the government hears us, and therefore hears you, about our collective safety. Traffic collisions are not an inevitability. How do you think we can prevent them?
The clouds are rolling in and more of the powdery white stuff is on the way… snow, that is. This week may bring another 6” of snow to Denver, and this week’s storms are also bringing high winds of over 40 mph. Wind gusts are more dangerous to your commute than you might think. While no one loves driving in windy conditions that whip their car around, especially when passing a large truck or bus. Wind also sweeps snow onto the roadways, cooling and patting it down, creating icier conditions than snow alone. But the bigger issue in the news lately has been avalanche danger. Typically relegated to back country skiing, there have been numerous tragic avalanches across Colorado roadways this month.
In addition to the road closures, just this weekend, the Denver Post reported several injuries and one fatality related to “roof avalanches.”
Two men were working to create a safer environment for others in Crested Butte by clearing snow from a commercial building roof when they were trapped in a slide themselves. One was injured, while the other suffered fatal injuries. Avalanche warnings were seen this season for the first time just weeks ago, but have been continually expanded as snow reports continue. In today’s media, the word “historic” may seem cliché at best, but the avalanche dangers in our state are truly that. Colorado has already surpassed the last several record years for the number of avalanches, and is quickly approaching the heartbreaking records set for injuries and death.
Why are we seeing so many monster snow waves sweeping across our highways? According to the National Weather Service, we are in the midst of a perfect storm.
It’s not just anecdotal that the memes showing a tropical paradise on the sunny side of the street with an arctic freeze on the other side seem to accurately describe Colorado weather. And that is the perfect recipe for avalanche disasters. Simple avalanches are caused by high snowfall, usually in a rapid manner.
But the Colorado weather recipe of alternating cold to moderate temperatures destabilizes the layers of the fluffy stuff, causing a freeze-to-melt pattern made perfect for a slide.
The instability results in a snow break, which is marked by a separation of the unstable snow from more stable packed snow. This most commonly occurs within 24 hours of the snowfall because the overload of the new snow weakens the melt-to-freeze-to-melt layers beneath. When these conditions are combined with wind, further increases in temperature, and other natural conditions like lack of vegetation and slope steepness, you see the types of dangers we have been facing this month in Colorado. The weather forecasts this week are calling for a continuation of these perfect conditions. Heavy winds, rapid drops of large amounts of snow, coupled with temps that are forecast to fluctuate over 25 degrees in a single day — an avalanche’s delight. According to the Colorado Geography Survey’s Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC), unstable snow pack can cause a slide of up to 200 mph of blasts able to destroy structures and trees. Even the blast of air that precedes the slide can be destructive in itself. In the past few weeks, many Colorado residents have found themselves being completely consumed in their vehicles by a rush of white.
The speeds of the avalanches and sheer force of the blasts are dangerous enough, but the post-slide conditions can further complicate the issue.
Multiple authority organizations, including CAIC, are recommending Coloradans avoid avalanche zones entirely until the weather evens out. However, it is not the Colorado way to avoid ski slopes with this much powder.
Here are extremely important safety tips we should all know so well they act like muscle memory in our minds:
1. If you are in your vehicle during a slide, snow your vehicle to a stop and shut off the engine. This first step is one of the most vital to survival. Don’t let vehicle fumes take you out long before the cold ever would. Stay in your vehicle until the authorities arrive. If not completely covered, your vehicle will protect you from the elements and keep you warmer. If completely submerged, the human body is denser than snow. You will not successfully climb from your vehicle to the top of the slide where you would access warmth and air. The snow will simply continue to pack around you. You will only sink deeper into the mound. Keep yourself in the warmth and safety of your vehicle until safety crews arrive. If stuck for a lengthy stay, you may want to open your windows slightly and use an ice scraper to hollow out some space for air.
2. If you are caught in a slide while shredding, point directly downhill to attempt to gain speed. If able, veer sharply left or right to escape the path. If unable, reach for a tree. This will aid in climbing out, creating air space, and possibly absorbing the bulk of the slide versus impacting your body. Hang on to any debris, as your body is denser and will sink faster than debris. While the avalanche is still moving, swim hard. Work to create air space as much as possible. Once the slide stops, the snow pack will settle in like concrete. You want to create as much body and air space as possible. If able, punch skyward to continue to create more breathing room for yourself.
Obviously, no skier or boarder should head into the danger zones without beacons and avalanche gear. And during high avalanche periods like we are seeing now, anyone driving through the mountains should also be equipped with survival gear. Make sure to pack blankets, water, shovels, and food in your vehicle. Make sure to keep your cell phone fully charged while driving in case of emergency, and carry an external battery. Have a first aid kit in case of minor injuries you can treat yourself and to mitigate the impact of major injuries until EMS arrives. Hand warmers will also be extremely helpful in case of being caught in your vehicle during a slide, so equipping your car with plenty of those can make a significant difference.
Colorado typically sees 4–5 fatalities annually from avalanches. We have neared, if not surpassed, that average already this year. Please take heed of these preparation and eventuality tips. Do not contribute to making 2019 a record-breaking year. For more questions and concerns, contact us.
Here are several links for further information and safety tips:
FAA safety inspectors may have improperly approved thousands of aircraft for commercial operation without first reviewing the exemption limitations that could cause them to be prohibited. A whistleblower made a report to the Office of Special Counsel, which requested that the Federal Aviation Administration conduct an investigation. The investigation found that more than 11,000 planes that should have failed their inspections were passed by the inspectors, endangering the public.
According to the whistleblower, the safety inspectors regularly approved planes to fly without reviewing critical safety information about the planes, passing many that should have failed their inspections. Some planes that were passed had rear exit doors that were nearly inaccessible, which could mean that passengers on the plane could be trapped in the case of a crash. Many planes that were passed had expired registrations at the time of their inspections. A number of planes that were no longer registered continued to be operated for flights.
Findings of the FAA
The FAA conducted its investigation and reported its findings to the Office of Special Counsel. It substantiated the report that the planes were passed despite having inaccessible exit doors. According to the FAA, some of the planes had interior doors installed that blocked people’s access to the rear exits. The planes are only permitted to have those interior doors if they have locking mechanisms installed that prevent the doors from becoming closed. However, many of the planes did not have the locking mechanisms installed and were still allowed to fly. The FAA also substantiated the whistleblower’s report that some planes were allowed to continue flying despite having expired registrations in violation of the FAA’s safety regulations.
Corrective Actions
The FAA recommended a number of corrective actions, including the development and implementation of a corrective action plan that includes specific due dates. It also recommended clarifying any exclusions or limitations that are included in the FAA manual to make certain that inspectors look for the locking mechanisms and to fail passenger planes that don’t have them. It also recommended that the registration system is updated and that planes that are expired are not passed.
