Health Coverage, Are You Covered?

By Dan Nitzel, NOHVA Business Manager

While many ATV and dirtbike riders may not realize it, if you or someone in your family becomes injured due to an injury on an ATV or dirtbike, your insurance may not cover your medical bills.  It is not uncommon for health insurance policies to “exclude” activities that they determine are “dangerous” such as riding ATVs and dirtbikes for recreation and trail riding. 

Recently, WOWT channel 6 in Omaha reported an incident were a family in Omaha was not covered by health insurance after a family member suffered a leg fracture.  Apparently, the injured was a self employed contractor and purchased a healthcare policy that promised coverage for only $52 a month.  The injured purchased a policy with Guardian Healthcare via their OptiMed program and was miss-led that he had full coverage, and the injured did not find out that his injury was not covered until $19,000 in medical bills began to roll in. 

Apparently the injured purchased a “discount” health policy, a policy that says it guarantees coverage at a much lower rate because of “special agreements” with health service providers.  The injured rider failed to do his research and discovered that the policy he purchased offered little or no coverage for about any health related risk. 

Even with health insurance policies costing $400+ a month for a single person, some policies do not cover injuries from “dangerous” activities such as riding ATVs and dirtbikes for recreation and trail riding.

Do you like to race?  Your insurance company may not like it.  Many people’s health insurance do not have coverage for competitive sports and events.  With this in mind, many people who are injured at a motocross race or some other race tell their insurance company that they were injured falling off of a ladder or falling down a stairway. This is not a good idea as most policies require that you provide truthful information when a claim is made.  If they find out that you may have made false statements about how you were injured, coverage for the accident may not be covered, meaning you have to pay out of your pocket. 

What makes matters even worse is that when the federal HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) regulations were passed in 1996, HIPAA had some flaws that allowed insurance companies to exclude recreational activities from being covered.  Our friends at the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) are working to get the flaws removed from HIPAA.

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This page was updated on Sunday, March 01, 2009