The issue comes up a lot in personal injury cases: may the defendant introduce the discounted amount the provider actually accepted for medical services as evidence to be weighed against the undiscounted bill the plaintiff introduces?  In the case before the Indiana Supreme Court the two amounts were miles apart: $12,000 vs. $88,000.

Indiana has a statute on the subject.  It says that in personal injury cases a court shall admit evidence of collateral source payments other than specified exceptions, which include “insurance benefits that the plaintiff … paid for directly” and payments made by “the state or the United States” or “any agency, instrumentality, or subdivision of the state or the United States.”

Despite that language, in 2009 the court allowed evidence of the discounted amount paid by the commercial insurance policy that the plaintiff paid for, provided that there is no reference to the fact that the amount was paid by an insurance company.

Patchett v. Lee presented a twist on the facts of the 2009 case.  Plaintiff Lee maintained and paid for the insurance that paid her medical bills, but it wasn’t commercial insurance.  It was the state-sponsored Healthy Indiana Plan.  The trial court and Court of Appeals sided with Lee and refused to admit defendant Patchett’s evidence that the discounted bill was only $12,000.

The Supreme Court reversed, ruling that its 2009 decision should control because in this context there’s no material difference between commercial insurance and state-sponsored insurance.  So evidence of the discounted bill was admissible despite the statute’s stated exceptions for (a) insurance benefits that the plaintiff paid for and (b) payments made by the state or its instrumentality.

The case is Patchett v. Lee, No. 29S04-1610-CT-549 (Ind., Oct. 21, 2016).