If done properly, this IS fair. It seems that in this case, it was not done properly.
I've been there done that. I was injured in the workplace. Normally, our health expenses are paid for by Medicare (government insurance). But if you are injured in a compensation matter, you send the bills to the relevant insurance company. In my case, my employer's insurer paid the bills, at least to begin with. They also paid me when I was off work, so my employer could use my salary to employ a temporary replacement. That's why the employer has insurance - so THEY don't have to pay the medical bills and so THEY don't have to be out of pocket when it comes to substituting for an injured employee.
Then my doctors reported my condition was long-term, possibly permanent. That's when the insurance company chose to fight the matter, to settle things one way or another. They denied liability. This meant I had to pay my own medical bills and was also no longer being paid lost wages. If I won the court case, I could then get reimbursed by the insurance company for both my outstanding medical bills and for my lost wages (because by now, my employer was also having to replace me).
It took several years to get to court. Eventually my legal team advised me to settle. In determining the size of the settlement, they took into account the amount of medical bills needing to be reimbursed. Not only the bills I was out of pocket for, but any bills paid by my health insurance (this is not the employer's insurer, but my own health insurer). My legal team also added in an amount for my lost wages.
The settlement wasn't big because it made no provisions for the future. Only back wages were accounted for, but a separate amount, specified by the court and based on the medical records I had provided showing amounts paid and amounts owing, was set aside for medical costs.
What SHOULD happen in a legal settlement - money should be paid for the person's ongoing costs associated with just trying to live. Where the person's ability to earn at their pre-accident level is impaired, that should be compensated for in the settlement. That should be entirely separate from any amount owed to anybody else who has paid medical expenses which by rights should have been covered by whoever caused the injury.
Unfortunately, if the settlement did not take this fully into account, then the settlement is flawed. In OUR legal system (and the US too?) the option is there to go back to court and set aside the earlier settlement because a new situation has arisen, unknown at the time of the original settlement. Not enough was allotted to allow for ongoing upkeep of the person and ongoing lost wages, since medical has now claimed far more than was originally expected. This means the original settlement should be re-evaluated.
Some lawyers will take these cases on a contingency basis. If you win, they get a percentage of the amount awarded. If you lose, they get nothing. Therefore they have a vested interest in fighting for you.
It's worth investigating. Plus, you can always sue the lawyers who allowed such a bad settlement to go through, without taking the outstanding medical expenses into account.
Marg
Marg