Howell v. Hamilton Meats & Provisions

In this case, we must decide whether a plaintiff who has private health care insurance in a personal injury case may recover, under the collateral source rule, economic damages for the amount of past medical expenses that her health care providers have billed, but which neither the plaintiff nor her health care insurer is obligated to pay because the providers have agreed, under contracts into which they have entered with the insurer, to accept-as payment in full-payments in an amountthat is less than the amount the providers have billed. Stated differently, is the difference (hereafter referred to as the negotiated rate differential) between (1) the full amount of the medical providers bills, and (2) the lesser amount paid by the private health care insurer in cash payments to the medical providers that the providers have agreed to accept as payment in full pursuant to their agreements with the insurer, a benefit within the meaning of the collateral source rule such that the plaintiff is entitled under that rule to recover the amount of the negotiated rate differential as part of her economic damages award?