What counts
Everything the bills can't show: pain, sleepless nights, the surf sessions and beach walks you stopped taking, anxiety at the 5/78 merge, the help you needed to dress or drive. California calls these non-economic damages, and in serious cases they exceed the medical bills — often by multiples.
How insurers actually compute it
Two frames dominate: the multiplier method (economic damages × 1.5 for minor recoveries up to 5+ for life-altering injuries) and per diem (a daily figure across documented recovery). Neither binds anyone — a Vista jury follows neither — which is exactly the leverage a trial-ready case carries into negotiation.
What moves the number
- Objective findings — imaging beats adjectives.
- Consistent treatment — gaps read as recovery, fairly or not. (Deployment-related gaps are explainable — document them, don't just endure them.)
- Contemporaneous life-impact records — a recovery journal, missed-event notes, the people around you.
- Credibility — specificity compounds; exaggeration discounts everything.
Why the first offer covers bills and little else
Subjective value collapses when nobody fights for it — that's the entire strategy. It's also the component representation changes most: an adjuster prices pain and suffering differently when the alternative is explaining it to a jury, which is why this line and the whole settlement move together. If your offer reads like a bill-reimbursement, have it valued properly before you sign.
