It covers own vehicle for damage.
Other countries? Frak if I know, I am 1000 miles from another country.
We don’t have much of an accident record. My car is from 2015 and is not fancy.
Also, location matters as someone else pointed out.
Also, some people have a super low deductible (like $250). I think ours is $1000.
Two adults, late 30s, clean-ish records (a few speeding tickets each in the past decade), two cheap manual cars (2012 and 2015 Honda Fits), with full coverage and roadside assistance, costs us $120/month near St. Louis. I’m sure it would be somewhat cheaper if we paid yearly.
First, in the United States, what is called “bodily injury” is coverage for another person in the accident if you are at fault. It does not cover you. Some full coverage policies have relatively meager amounts (say $25k) in “medical coverage” which covers you, no fault, pays up front with no deductibles.
From reading some of the other posts, nothing would change WRT to this “bodily injury” situation in most cases.
Imagine: I am negligent and hit you causing you to have to go to the hospital, and the bill is $48,500.
In the United States, you would be responsible for that amount. You say, no way my boy, you caused this accident so you (Ultravires) pay me $48,500. Lucky for me I bought auto insurance in a sufficient amount so my auto insurance writes a check to you for $48,500 (plus usually 2 1/2 to 3 times that amount, the extra for pain and suffering) maybe prior to or after litigation.
If you have medical insurance, and you paid out of pocket, say, $5000, then you insurance is going to ask you to reimburse them what they paid. Say they negotiated a rate of $15,500 for the service. You get to pocket the extra. The idea is that I shouldn’t benefit from your good choice to buy medical insurance.
It sounds like in countries with UHC something similar happens (although how do you all handle pain and suffering?) Instead of using your own medical insurance you present the UHC card and get free treatment. The government then comes after me based on the idea that since I caused your injury, the taxpayers should not foot the bill. So my insurance pays back the government. Do I have that right? If so, what happens if I dispute that the accident was my fault? Does the government sue me?
Anyways, you probably wouldn’t see that disappear, although it theoretically should be cheaper as the auto insurance would not have to pay the hospital sticker price.
In Japan and Taiwan medical costs are paid by the car insurance company rather than through the National Health systems, but medical costs in these countries are much cheaper than in the States. I presume that the car insurance companies can use the same standard costs which the National Health insurance company pays.
One reason for the savings is that the doctors make less here. I have friends who are doctors and they say that they make less than what they would in the States.
AFAIK in Canada, the medical system absorbs all costs. They (the province which provides the health care) typically do not chase anyone for cost of a motor vehicle accident. The only exceptions AFAIK would be if you were out-of-province which they get paid from your home province, and foreign - better have travel insurance (something we always get when travelling to the USA). But again, the province chases the patient or their province or travel insurance, and it’s up to the patient or their travel health insurerer to recover the cost.
One exception - anything medical to do with Worker’s Compensation is separately billed to that provincial organization. (Worker’s comp is a substitute for being able to sue your employer; it covers medical bills, lost wages, disability pensions from work causes etc.) So in effect, every province has two forms of “health insurance” - regular and workplace. Worker’s comp is very forgiving, it covers just about anything work related - after all, if it excluded sheer stupidity, that would probably rule out covering three quarters of accidents. I assume any on-the-job auto accidents are covered this way. AFAIK the only thing NOT covered is blatantly illegal acts like DUI - but then, regular UHC covers medical bills for those and does not chase the patient for reimbursement.
Again, Northern Piper can probably better answer this, but also Canada does not typically award significant amounts for “pain and suffering”.
Also, our medicare does not automatically cover some physiotherapy and other long term treatment. So major insurance injury costs for accidents would be things like ongoing physio, pain management, home care, fancy devices like motorized wheelchairs, retrofitting homes to accommodate disability, etc. Some of these are also covered to some degree by welfare and other provincial plans, some will be out of pocket. In provinces with “no fault” typically these costs are settled by rules and an arbitrator, and unless the damage to the vehicle was pretty severe your amounts will be limited.
But to get back to the OP - basic treatments for accident injuries are covered regardless of who was to blame; there is one provider (or two with worker’s comp) and rarely any arguments over what is covered, so entire billing departments (on both ends) are a lot smaller and simpler. Without court cases to argue over medical bills, a huge amount of litigation costs disappear too, which it can be argued are a significant addition to any health or auto insurance.
I should also mention a fellow who lived down the street from me years ago had two daughters who were nurses. They had gone to the USA to work, but came back after a while because a part of the job that bothered them was to have to ask incoming patents if they had coverage before they got treatment (or didn’t). This is unheard of in Canada. Figuring out coverage details is far down the priority list, since 99% of people admitted are provincial residents and automatically covered - and nobody was worried that not-covered patients would break the bank for the hospital.
I’ve looked up the NHS cost recovery system in a bit more detail. Basically, it comes into operation if and when there’s a payment for personal injury compensation, based on a standard tariff per day of treatment up to a maximum of about £57k. No detailed rehashing of exactly what the treatment consisted of, and anything to do with pain and suffering would have been dealt between the individual and the insurance company as part of the usual insurance compensation process.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nhs-injury-cost-recovery-scheme