Lawyer's idea spawns industry that finds successful accident plaintiffs to repay insurers
A Kentucky lawyer who represented insurers came up with an idea in the 1980s: Why not identify personal injury judgments that can be used to repay medical costs covered by insurance companies?
The lawyer, George Rawlings, asked Humana Inc. for a printout of codes for injuries such as broken bones and head trauma, which could be caused by car accidents. The first month he identified 200 cases and became so successful at finding potential sources of recovery that Humana funded a competing operation, Bloomberg News reports in a profile of Rawlings.
The story calls Rawlings “the father of a little-known but burgeoning industry” that helped insurers recover at least $3.5 billion in payouts in 2014. Dozens of law firms and companies now pursue health-care subrogation claims for insurers.
Rawlings’ company, Rawlings Co., usually earns 20 percent of the money recovered for insurers. He has 1,100 employees who earn cash bonuses for successful claims mined from court filings, news articles and social media. His company also produces eight million letters a year for health insurers asking whether a recent hospital stay was the result of an accident.
