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"If someone gets in a car accident and is NOT wearing a seat belt, statistics say that their medical costs are going to be much higher."

Cite source, please.

1) Common Sense - if you go headfirst through a windshield, you are likely to have more medical costs than if you stay in your seat.

OR for those who need more proof:

"In the past 26 years, safety belts prevented 135,000 fatalities and 3.8 million injuries, saving $585 billion in medical and other costs. If all vehicle occupants had used safety belts during that period, nearly 315,000 deaths and 5.2 million injuries could have been prevented — and $913 billion in costs saved." [NHTSA, Economic Impact of Crashes, 2002]

Personally, after 7 years studying and trading stock and commodity futures markets, I have come to be very sceptical of statistics from a government agency. You might want to go check out these links for the other side of the story:

Freedom Forced to Buckle, Part 1
Freedom Forced to Buckle, Part 2

A small sample:

"One of the starkest examples of our government's inexorable usurpation of personal liberties in the name of the "greater good" has been the near-universal adoption of mandatory seat belt laws in the 50 states and the District of Columbia over the last two decades. Only one U.S. state, New Hampshire, whose fitting motto is "Live Free or Die," continues to put the individual's freedom and accountability above overreaching state power and federal fiscal coercion (more on this in a minute).

And not surprisingly to anyone who hasn't been brainwashed by the nannyish government into believing they're in mortal danger if they don't buckle up, the Granite State is perennially among the three or four safest states from a fatalities-per-vehicle and fatalities-per-mile standpoint -- despite having among the lowest seat belt use in the nation -- just 49.6% in 2003...

However, this being the age that it is, when principles are the redheaded stepchildren to pragmatism and when revenue is sovereign instead of rights, it takes numbers to make a point. One cannot simply argue the rightness or wrongness of anything these days -- at least not with any hope of being taken seriously. And so let's start off by considering the issue in purely numerical terms:

Do seat belts really save as many lives as everyone says? Do they save ANY?"

Go check out the links for the rest of the story.