-BATON ROUGE, LA  (Wed, September 19, 2018). 

On August 8, 2018 the National Alliance of Medicare Set-Aside Professionals (NAMSAP) in Baton Rouge issued an alert to members regarding an informal discussion they had with the CMS regarding a potential LMSA review process in third-party liability settlements.  Today, NAMSAP issued a clarification bulletin advising that [1]:

• The purpose of the meeting was for CMS to listen to thoughts and ideas from NAMSAP representatives on developing an acceptable and functional review process for LMSAs.
• During the course of the meeting both CMS and NAMSAP discussed various hypothetical scenarios and methodologies for such a LMSA review process which in no way represent either proposed or final CMS policy positions in regard to LMSAs.
• CMS does not have an 18-month timeframe from April 2018 for implementing a LMSA review process, rather the point CMS made is that there would be a considerable amount of time required to develop, finalize and implement any LMSA process.

In consideration of those statements, the position of the CMS regarding lawyers protecting Medicare’s interests in third-party liability settlements remains ambiguous. Until hard and fast regulations are passed by Congress or the CMS creates a mechanism for LMSA reviewal, attorneys may continue to depend upon their due diligence and good faith actions in these matters to protect themselves and their clients from liability.

[1] Ton Stanley, William Delaney, et al., NAMSAP Special Bulletin: Liability Medicare Set Asides, National Alliance of Medicare Set-Aside Professionals (Sep. 19, 2018) (from: info@namsap.org).