Your Medical Bills After SB 68: What a Macon Jury Will Actually See

By Ben Sessions on October 20th, 2026 in Personal Injury

For decades, the medical damages presentation in a Georgia injury case was straightforward: the jury saw what the hospital charged. Whether your health insurer had negotiated that $48,000 bill down to $9,000 was none of the jury’s business, under the collateral source rule.

That changed on April 21, 2025.

The new statute

SB 68 created O.C.G.A. § 51-12-1.1, and it is short enough to be worth reading closely.

Subsection (a) provides that in any civil action to recover damages for injury or death, special damages for medical and healthcare expenses are recoverable only as provided in that Code section.

Subsection (b) limits those damages to “the reasonable value of medically necessary care, treatment, or services,” with the amount determined by the trier of fact.

Subsection (c) is the operative change. Where the plaintiff has public or private health insurance — or coverage through an applicable governmental workers’ compensation program — evidence relevant to reasonable value “shall include both the amounts charged … and the amounts actually necessary to satisfy such charges pursuant to the insurance contract.”

Subsection (e) says the quiet part directly: the section “abrogates the common law collateral source rule to the extent necessary to introduce the evidence described in this Code section.”

Subsection (f) preserves the right of either side to present evidence challenging the reasonableness of medical expenses.

The section applies to causes of action arising on or after April 21, 2025. Claims that accrued before that date are governed by prior law.

What this actually means in a case

The billed-charge number no longer stands alone. If you had health insurance, the jury will hear both the sticker price and the negotiated amount, and it decides what the reasonable value was. Practically, the number a jury anchors on is going to be closer to the paid figure than it used to be.

“Reasonable value” is now a question of fact to be proven. It is not established by handing up a stack of bills. In a contested case it will increasingly require testimony — treating providers, billing witnesses, or experts on prevailing charges in the Macon market — on what the care was actually worth.

Uninsured plaintiffs sit in a different position. Subsection (c) is written around plaintiffs who have insurance or workers’ compensation coverage. Roughly 16.1% of Macon-Bibb County residents under 65 are uninsured, which makes this a live issue locally. For an uninsured plaintiff there is no negotiated contract amount to put alongside the charge — but subsection (b)’s “reasonable value” ceiling still applies to everyone, and defendants will litigate what that value is.

Letters of protection are now exposed

This is the part that has changed day-to-day practice the most.

Where treatment is rendered under a letter of protection — the provider treats now and is paid from the settlement — subsection (d) makes the following relevant and discoverable:

a copy of the letter of protection;
all itemized charges;
if the accounts receivable were sold to a third party at less than invoice price, the name of that third party and the amount paid; and
whether a referral was made, and by whom.

Read item four carefully. If a lawyer referred a client to a provider, that fact is now discoverable and will be put in front of the jury. The defense argument — that the treatment was generated by the litigation rather than by the injury — now has a statutory path to the jury box.

That is not a reason to forgo necessary care. It is a reason for the medical decisions in a case to be driven by physicians and documented as such.

What this does not change

You can still recover for medically necessary treatment. The statute limits the measure of recovery, not the right to it.

Future medical care remains recoverable, subject to the same reasonable-value standard, proven through medical testimony and where appropriate a life care plan.

Noneconomic damages are untouched by this statute. Pain, suffering, impairment, disfigurement, and loss of enjoyment of life are governed by different rules — including the new anchoring restrictions in O.C.G.A. § 9-10-184, which bar counsel from arguing a specific monetary value for noneconomic damages before the close of evidence.

Hospital liens still operate. Nothing in § 51-12-1.1 alters a provider’s lien rights, which is why what you keep from a settlement remains a separate question from what a jury awards.

Why this matters more in Macon than in a lot of Georgia

Serious injuries in Middle Georgia are concentrated at Atrium Health Navicent The Medical Center — the only verified Level I trauma center in the region and the only designated trauma center in Bibb County at any level, serving a roughly 30-county area of about 750,000 people.

Level I trauma care generates large billed charges. Under prior law those charges went to the jury unqualified. Under § 51-12-1.1, in an insured case, the negotiated amount goes up alongside them.

The gap between those two numbers on a serious trauma admission is not small. Building a case as though it were still 2024 will produce a materially different result.

What to do about it

Use your health insurance. Some people avoid it thinking it weakens the claim. It does not, and it usually improves the net outcome after liens and reimbursement.
Let physicians drive treatment decisions, and make sure the records reflect the medical reasoning. Medical necessity is now explicitly an element.
Understand the tradeoffs before treating on a letter of protection. Sometimes it is the only option. It is no longer a private arrangement.
Keep every bill, every explanation of benefits, and every payment record. Both numbers matter now.

Where to go from here

If your injury happened on or after April 21, 2025, this statute governs your medical damages, and how the case is built from the first visit forward determines what a jury is allowed to see.

Our Macon office is at 544 Mulberry Street, Suite 319. Free consultation, no fee unless we recover for you. (470) 225-7710.

Sessions & Fleischman, LLC — Macon office: 544 Mulberry Street, Suite 319, Macon, GA 31201 | (470) 225-7710
Responsible attorney for the content of this page: Ben Sessions, Georgia Bar No. 141280.

This article is general information about Georgia law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Every case is different and past results do not predict future outcomes.

SB 68 is recent and its application is still being worked out in the courts.

Contingent attorneys’ fees refers only to those fees charged by attorneys for their legal services. Such fees are not permitted in all types of cases. Court costs and other additional expenses of legal action usually must be paid by the client.