Coverage for your medical bills (and sometimes lost wages and replacement services – help around the home you have to hire) is generally offered by car insurance companies. Depending on your state’s laws, this medical coverage generally comes in two flavors:

• Medical payments coverage (plain vanilla)
• Personal injury protection coverage (banana fudge supreme)

Both coverages are similar in the sense that they pay your medical bills suffered in a car accident, regardless of fault, up to the limit you purchased. Personal injury protection has the added advantage (at a considerably greater cost) of also reimbursing you for some of your lost wages or replacement services. Some states even allow you (for an additional premium) to add together the personal injury coverage limits per car (called stacking) to cover a single injury (for example, $20,000 coverage per car × 3 cars on the policy = $60,000 total medical coverage for a single injury).

I don’t have space to cover all the different requirements or costs relating to these coverages, but keep in mind three things when buying either coverage:

• Check the law in your particular state. State laws on medical payments coverage or personal injury protection coverage vary dramatically.
• Buy only as much medical-related coverage as the law requires. Medical and disability costs should be covered under other policies you have, so having additional car insurance coverage is redundant.
• Don’t buy additional coverage for your medical bills and/or lost wages from car accidents only. This approach is betting that those particular kinds of expenses will happen just in an auto accident and is a violation of the principle “Don’t buy Las Vegas insurance”.

Not buying more than minimum coverage limits for either medical payments or personal injury protection is an area where you can save money on your insurance. To fully transfer the risks of medical payments and personal injury, not just those arising from car accidents but from any illness or injury, you need major medical insurance and long-term disability insurance – both of which cover financial losses no matter how the losses are caused, rendering special insurance to cover the damages caused only by car accidents superfluous.

If you don’t already have major medical and long-term disability coverage in your insurance portfolio, I urge you to consider adding both immediately.