Litigation

Medicare Liens and Personal Injury Settlements -- What Every Insurer and Self-Insured Company Needs To Know

By Bruce Nye

    There is a sleeper issue out there involving Medicare liens in personal injury settlements.  While it isn't a strictly California issue, it's going to have a big impact on the defense and settlement of some product liability and other personal injury cases in California and everywhere else.

    The issue is this:  Congress has enacted legislation (42 U.S.C. 1395y(b)(7) & (8)) requiring that every insurer or self-insured company that settles a personal injury case with a Medicare beneficiary submit an electronic report of the settlement to CMS, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Administration, so that Medicare's recovery contractor can recover every last dime of the benefits it has paid.  And if the recovery contractor can't get the money from the plaintiff, it's coming after the defendant or its insurer -- even if they've already paid the plaintiff.

    Adams Nye, CalBizLit's law firm, has just published a White Paper:  "Medicare Liens and Personal Injury Settlements -- What Every Insurer and Self-Insured Company Needs To Know."  It's downloadable here, and I've added it to the list of White Papers over on the right hand column of this blog.  Please download and distribute freely.

    This is important enough I'm going to leave this post at the top of CalBizLit.com for the next week or so.

Full post as published by CalBizLit on June 03, 2009 (boomark / email).