Author: Jason D. Lazarus

July 1, 2021

7 Ways Structured Settlements Protect Personal Injury Victims

Structured settlements utilizing life insurance annuities as their funding mechanism have been around for four decades. Over half a million injury victims receive benefits from structured settlement annuities. Each year, life insurance companies that provide structured settlements receive more than $6 billion to fund new structured settlement arrangements and an estimated $156 billion has been paid in total to fund structured settlements in force since the seventies.

Structured settlements are commonly utilized in the settlement of tort claims because of these seven crucial advantages they offer personal injury victims.

June 30, 2021

Jason D. Lazarus on Grow Your Law Firm Podcast

Jason D. Lazarus was recently featured on Grow Your Law Firm podcast with Ken Hardison of PILMMA.

May 26, 2021

Lawyers Assisting Medicare Beneficiaries, Heed These Words of Warning

Medicare is complex, to say the least. Medicare Parts A, B, C, and D all cover distinct but overlapping services. Meanwhile, Medicare eligibility is connected to Social Security Disability Income, and the Medicare Secondary Payer Act is a series of statutory provisions that would make even the most detail-oriented person’s head spin.

May 3, 2021

Personal Injury Lawyers Have a Responsibility to Address the Financial Implications of a Client’s Settlement

When personal injury victims win a settlement, it can be life-changing. They have costly medical bills to contend with, as well as the fact that they often aren’t able to live or work the way they used to. To victims, settlements aren’t just money; they’re an assurance that the victim will have their needs met and will be able to get on with their lives as best they can.

April 19, 2021

How the Acronym “CAD” Can Help You Ensure You’re Medicare Compliant

Once you’ve already identified someone as a Medicare beneficiary (or someone with the reasonable expectation of becoming one within thirty months), the easiest way to make sure you’re compliant is to follow the acronym “CAD.”

April 14, 2021

Reducing Medicaid Liens: Why Was the Ahlborn Case Such a Significant Victory for Injury Victims?

Heidi Ahlborn was injured in a very serious car accident in January of 1996. At the time, she was a nineteen-year-old college student pursuing a degree in teaching. She suffered a catastrophic brain injury that left her incapable of finishing college and unable to care for or support herself in the future. When the Arkansas Department of Health tried to assert a lien against Ahlborn’s settlement, she sued, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, who found in her favor.

April 13, 2021

How the Advent of the Mandatory Insurer Requirement Causes Problems for Lawyers

As of April 1, 2011, a Responsible Reporting Entities/insurers (RRE), (liability insurer, self-insurer, no-fault insurer, and workers’ compensation carriers) must determine whether a claimant is a Medicare beneficiary (“entitled”) and if so, provide certain information to the secretary of Health and Human Services (hereinafter “secretary”) when the claim is resolved. This is the so-called Mandatory Insurer Requirement, MIR for short.

April 9, 2021

The Unregulated New Frontier of Medicare Set-Asides

Consider this scenario: you represent a current Medicare beneficiary in a third-party liability case. As part of the workup of the case, you determine the client will need future medical care related to the injuries suffered, and you settle the case. Since the client is a Medicare beneficiary, the defendant will report the settlement under the Mandatory Insurer Reporting law as it is greater than $750 in gross settlement proceeds.

April 8, 2021

What is a Medicare Set-Aside?

For many years, personal injury cases have been resolved without consideration of Medicare’s secondary payer status even though since 1980 all forms of liability insurance have been primary to Medicare. At settlement, by judgment or through an award, an injury victim would receive damages for future medical expenses that were Medicare-covered. However, none of those settlement dollars would be used to pay for future Medicare-covered health needs. Instead, the burden would be shifted from the primary payer (liability insurer or workers’ compensation carrier) to Medicare. Injury victims would routinely provide their Medicare card to providers for injury-related care.

April 7, 2021

Why Qualified Settlement Funds are an Important Tool for Trial Lawyers to Understand

What do you do when you settle a case like this where your client is on public assistance, there are allocation issues, settlement planning issues must be addressed, and there are liens to negotiate? Where can you “park” the money while you set up any necessary public benefit preservation trusts, determine allocation of the proceeds, figure out a financial plan, and negotiate the liens?

April 6, 2021

What are Your ERISA Plan’s Recovery Rights?

Most, if not all, ERISA health insurance plans state that injuries caused by a liable third party are not a covered expense and require reimbursement when a plan pays for injury-related medical expenses (often referred to as subrogation clauses). ERISA provides that health plans which qualify under its provisions can bring a civil action under section 502(a)(3) to obtain equitable relief to enforce the terms of the plan. Appropriate equitable relief is really the only enforcement mechanism an ERISA plan can utilize to address its reimbursement rights contained in the plan.

April 5, 2021

Confused by Medicare? Here’s a Helpful Overview

The Medicare program—and the related Social Security Disability Income/Retirement benefit (SSDI)—is one of the primary benefit programs available to those who are injured and disabled. Understanding the basics of this program is imperative to protecting the client’s eligibility for their benefits.

Medicare and SSDI benefits are an entitlement and are not income or asset sensitive. Clients who meet Social Security’s definition of disability and have paid enough quarters into the system can receive disability benefits regardless of their financial situation.

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