Reply #22: sorry to not support the groupthink outrage here, but...

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first, this isn't really a mal-wart issue, it's an insurance issue. mal-wart isn't any different from any health insurance provider in this regard.

second, let me say that i have been a "victim" of exactly this sort of "subrogation". i was in a car accident (passenger in a cab, clearly not my fault). my auto and then my health insurance initially paid my medical bills. eventually i won a settlement from both the cab company and the car behind that rammed the cab i was in. the insurance companies got first dibs on my settlement money (well, second dibs, after my lawyers).

and i support this. my insurance was to compensate me for out of pocket medical expenses. having won those settlements, that means that SOMEONE ELSE paid my medical bills. therefore, i had no medical expenses. so why should i be entitled to reimbursment of medical expenses that in the end were fully paid by someone else?

i suppose one could argue that my insurance companies should be out money either way, and that perhaps the defendants i sued should get the insurance money, but *I* certainly should not be entitled to money from both the defendants AND the insurance company for the same expenses. that's double-dipping, and clearly wrong, imho.


where one *could* get a mild bit of outrage is that perhaps mal-wart could have made an *exception* to a reasonable standard practice and in this one particular case waived its right to recoveries from settlements. but if they did that, how exactly does one decide which cases to grant exceptions to and which not to?

sorry, but there are SOOOO many better reasons to hate mal-wart.