Dear Sailmaker510,
I do agree with you about your posting but I do want to point out something I think I need to clear up. You said "Right now a million dollars may look good - but 5 yrs down the road you may ask why did I do that. The ploy of the insureace company is to be your friend and put a big dollar sign in front of you and say sign on the dotted line." I don't believe the ploy of the ins co is to be your friend. They may think so but they have many different ways to make you change your mind. You say the money may look good now but but 5 years down the line ---...The ins co may be out of business or merged with another co by then and you could be cutoff OR what happens in case the patient dies by some random thing (I know I hate to think this way too) then will his/her suvivors get any money or will it just be cut off since the patient died?

If this is a workers comp settlement social security treats the money received as income and spreads it out over the years. You could wind up not getting a dime of SS money for several years as a result of the settlement. Maybe you could specify what is for transportation, PT, etc. before the settlement this way soc sec doesn't include it all as income. I know there are so many ways of looking at this and your ideas are correct. What has been happening to me is that the workers comp doesn't want to pay for me to get my Ketamine treatment so they are constantly filing court docs to go before a judge to keep me from getting them and it goes on and on for years. This is the way they stop your treatments. They want you to get so annoyed and frustrated you just give up. If you settle monetarily make sure you don't settle your health benefits. This way you can continue to get benefits even if you have to fight for them. Hopefully, Pres Obama will cutout disqualifying us for ins because of preexisting conditions. It will be interesting to see what happens. THanks for your email.
kathy d