New Collateral Source Law in Georgia 2025
New Georgia Law on Collateral Source Passed April 2025
After a great deal of legislative wrangling, Georgia passed a long overdue bill attempting to address one of the problems in the industry, artificially inflated medical bills from certain Doctors and clinics stemming from car accident cases. The problem is a lot of legitimate cases with real medical bills are going to get caught up in the mess and so lawyers and their client will need to navigate their way through cautiously.
Here is the body of the new bill and we will then go through and break down its meaning.
OCGA 51-12-1.1
(a) In any civil action to recover damages resulting from injury or death to a person, special damages for medical and healthcare expenses shall be recoverable only as provided in this Code section.
(b) Special damages for medical and healthcare expenses shall be limited to the reasonable value of medically necessary care, treatment, or services, and the amount of such special damages shall be determined by the trier of fact.
*Commentary: this part is nothing new*
(c) If the plaintiff in any such civil action has any form of public or private health insurance, including benefits under a governmental workers’ compensation program, evidence relevant to the determination of the reasonable value of medically necessary care, treatment, or services pursuant to subsection (b) of this Code section shall include both the amounts charged for past, present, or future medical and healthcare expenses and the amounts actually necessary to satisfy such charges pursuant to the insurance contract or the applicable governmental workers’ compensation program, regardless of whether the health insurance has been used, is used, or will be used to satisfy such charges.
*Commentary: This is where the problems start. This section only applies to people with health insurance accepted by the clinic they see or people covered under workers comp(note they screwed up drafting in that they left out workers comp after the word “regardless” so maybe it won’t apply if the person did not actually use comp. People with no health insurance are not affected by this.
What they appear to say is the that gross charge is shown to the jury as well as the contract amount the insurance company allows under their negotiated plan. Where is runs into further problems is in restricting future medical costs to costs allowed under and insurance plan that may have been in place when the crash happened but is or will be no longer due to job or market changes. It’s totally illogical when applied to future but will likely work until the whole statute is thrown out for treating different classes of plaintiffs differently.
What it doesn’t address is the fact that the client has to pay a lawyer 40% of the case value to take the case into litigation and the client had to pay health insurance premiums to have the benefit of the cheaper medical care. Can we now put that into evidence? It is probably up to the discretion of the trial court under (e) below, but no one really knows as of yet*
(d) In any claim for medical and healthcare expenses rendered under a letter of protection or any other arrangement by which a healthcare provider renders treatment in exchange for a promise of payment for the plaintiff’s medical and healthcare expenses from any judgment or settlement of a civil action to recover damages resulting from injury or death to a person, regardless of how such arrangement is referred to, the following shall be relevant and discoverable:
(1) A copy of the letter of protection;
(2) All charges for the plaintiff’s medical and healthcare expenses, which shall be
itemized and, to the extent applicable, coded according to generally accepted medical billing practices;
(3) If the healthcare provider sells the accounts receivable for the plaintiff’s medical and
healthcare expenses to a third party at less than the invoice price:
(A) The name of the third party; and
(B) The dollar amount for which the third party purchased such accounts receivable;
and
(4) Whether the claimant was referred for treatment under a letter of protection or other similar arrangement and, if so, the identity of the person who made the referral.
*Commentary: This applies to people without health insurance usually as they often treat with a doctor on a lien or credit, if you will. Because there is a risk that the plaintiff will lose the case and the accounts can take up to 5 years to pay as a case wanders through the court system, Doctors charge more for these treatments because they carry the accounts that entire time. The law says that if the Doctor ever sells the medical debt to a third party, then the jury gets to hear what the Doctor actually got paid for it. That seems pretty fair. Also fair for the jury to know if the lawyer made the referral to the Doctor. this section I really don’t have a problem with. I would love to see Plaintiffs send a letter to the insurer saying “Hey I need this surgery, if you insurance company will pay for it upfront with cash, I can get a cheaper price.” They will refuse of course but how can they complain at trial if it costs more on credit than at a cash price?*
(e) It is the intent of the General Assembly that this Code section abrogates the common law collateral source rule to the extent necessary to introduce the evidence described in this Code section; provided, however, that nothing in this Code section shall be construed or applied to prevent the court from issuing appropriate jury instructions to clarify the role of collateral source payments and to prevent potential jury confusion regarding the effect of collateral source payments on the plaintiff’s recovery.
(f) Nothing in this Code section shall be construed or applied to limit the right of a plaintiff or defendant to present evidence or testimony, or both, challenging the reasonableness of medical and healthcare expenses, whether incurred or projected future expenses, or the medical necessity of any treatment.”