PIP & Med-Pay rules in Indiana

If you were just hurt in an Indiana crash and someone told you to "file a PIP claim," here's the first thing to know: Indiana doesn't have PIP. There is no personal injury protection coverage to open, because Indiana runs on a fault-based (tort) system. The driver who caused the wreck is the one whose insurance answers for the injuries. That one fact shapes how every medical bill after your crash gets paid, and it's why the optional coverage called medical payments, or med-pay, matters more here than most drivers realize.

Indiana has no PIP requirement

PIP belongs to no-fault states, where your own policy pays your medical bills no matter who caused the crash and you trade away part of your right to sue. Indiana is not one of them. The only injury coverage Indiana law forces onto an auto policy is liability coverage for the harm you cause other people, plus uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage unless you reject it in writing.¹²

Indiana's minimum limits are written as 25/50/25: $25,000 for bodily injury to one person, $50,000 for bodily injury in one accident, and $25,000 for property damage. The property-damage floor climbed from $10,000 to $25,000 on July 1, 2018.³ Notice what's missing. None of those dollars pay your own medical bills. Liability coverage pays the other driver when you are at fault, and it pays you when the other driver is at fault, usually as one lump sum once the claim settles, not while you are still in treatment.

So the real question in the first weeks after an Indiana crash is who covers your care before anything settles. There are two answers: your health insurance, and med-pay if you bought it.

What medical payments coverage does in Indiana

Med-pay is optional in Indiana. If you add it, the Indiana Department of Insurance describes it as coverage that "pays medical bills incurred by you and usually your passengers, up to the limits of the policy, if injured while riding in, entering or getting out of the car."¹ The part that matters most is that it pays regardless of fault. You don't have to prove the other driver was negligent, and you don't wait for a settlement, so it clears bills quickly. It covers your passengers too, and it applies even in a single-vehicle crash where there is no other driver to blame.

The limits tend to be small, because you choose them and most drivers keep med-pay in the low thousands. Treat it as first-dollar money for the early costs, the ambulance run and the first emergency-room visit, or for the deductible and copays your health plan leaves you with. It is not a substitute for a full injury claim against the at-fault driver.

Med-pay carries no deductible and asks no fault question, and it sits on top of both your health insurance and any recovery you later collect from the driver who hit you.

Med-pay, your health insurance, and getting paid back

Two Indiana rules decide whether carrying med-pay actually leaves you ahead.

The first is the collateral source rule. Under Indiana Code 34-44-1-2, when your injury case reaches a jury, the at-fault driver generally cannot tell that jury that your own med-pay or health insurance already paid your bills. The statute keeps out "insurance benefits that the plaintiff or members of the plaintiff's family have paid for directly."⁴ The coverage you paid premiums for is meant to benefit you rather than the person who caused the crash, so it does not hand them a discount on what they owe.

The second is subrogation. In exchange for advancing your bills, your med-pay insurer often has a contractual right to be repaid out of your settlement. Indiana limits that clawback. Under the lien-reduction statute, Indiana Code 34-51-2-19, if your recovery is cut down (by your own share of fault, or because the at-fault driver simply didn't carry enough insurance), the lien "shall be diminished in the same proportion as the claimant's recovery is diminished," and the insurer holding it "shall bear a pro rata share of the claimant's attorney's fees and litigation expenses."⁵ A med-pay reimbursement claim shrinks when your case settles for less than your full damages, and the insurer helps pay for the recovery it benefits from.

When the at-fault driver can't cover your injuries

Because the state floor is only 25/50/25, plenty of at-fault Indiana drivers can't pay for a serious injury, and some carry no insurance at all. Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage exists for that gap. Indiana builds it into every new auto liability policy unless you reject it in writing, at minimums of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident for uninsured motorist bodily injury and $50,000 for underinsured motorist coverage.¹² If the driver who hit you had no insurance or ran out of limits, your own UM/UIM steps into their place and pays for your injuries. Unlike med-pay, it still turns on fault, so you have to show the other driver was to blame.

Deadlines and fault that decide what gets paid

Indiana gives you two years from the date of the crash to file a personal injury lawsuit, and two years for property damage, under Indiana Code 34-11-2-4(a)(1) and (a)(2).⁶ Let that clock run out and the claim that would reimburse your medical bills is gone, however strong it was.

Fault is measured under Indiana's Comparative Fault Act. You can recover even if you were partly to blame, but your damages fall by your percentage of fault, and at 51% or more you recover nothing.⁷ Because the liability side of your bills rises and falls with that fault split, how blame gets assigned early matters. The police crash report is usually the first document that puts it on paper, and you can pull the Indiana version through our Indiana crash-report guide.

One exception is worth flagging. If a government vehicle or entity caused your crash, the claim runs under the Indiana Tort Claims Act, which still uses old-style contributory negligence, so being even 1% at fault can bar you completely.⁸ Those claims also carry their own short notice deadlines, which are easy to miss.

When the pieces get tangled, say a low-limit at-fault driver plus a med-pay lien on a disputed claim, that is the point where a lawyer pays for themselves. You can find an Indiana attorney here. And if your vehicle also lost resale value in the wreck, that is a separate claim explained in our Indiana diminished-value guide.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

Indiana Department of Insurance, Auto Insurance. https://www.in.gov/idoi/consumer-services/types-of-insurance/auto-insurance/
Indiana Code 27-7-5-2, Indiana General Assembly. https://iga.in.gov/laws/2026/ic/titles/27#27-7-5-2
Indiana Code 9-25-4-5, Indiana General Assembly. https://iga.in.gov/laws/2026/ic/titles/9#9-25-4-5
Indiana Code 34-44-1-2, Indiana General Assembly. https://iga.in.gov/laws/2026/ic/titles/34#34-44-1-2
Indiana Code 34-51-2-19, Indiana General Assembly. https://iga.in.gov/laws/2026/ic/titles/34#34-51-2-19
Indiana Code 34-11-2-4, Indiana General Assembly. https://iga.in.gov/laws/2026/ic/titles/34#34-11-2-4
Indiana Code 34-51-2-6, Indiana General Assembly. https://iga.in.gov/laws/2026/ic/titles/34#34-51-2-6
Indiana Code 34-13-3 (Indiana Tort Claims Act), Indiana General Assembly. https://iga.in.gov/laws/2026/ic/titles/34#34-13-3

PIP & Med-Pay Rules in Indiana