The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services provided an alert on November 25, 2020 that it reviewed the costs related to collecting Medicare’s conditional payments and compared the cost to CMS recovery amounts, and decided to leave the threshold for physical trauma-based liability insurance settlements (including self-insurance settlements) at $750.  Additionally, CMS indicated it will keep the $750 threshold for No-Fault insurance and Workers’ Compensation settlements, where the No-Fault insurer or Workers’ Compensation entity does not otherwise have ongoing responsibility for medicals (ORM).  Otherwise, once ORM reaches $750 for either No Fault or Workers’ Compensation plan claims, those payments need to be reported for Medicare beneficiaries via Section 111 Reporting.  These described reporting thresholds do not apply to settlements for alleged ingestion, implantation, or exposure cases.

Take Aways:

Those settlements falling under any of the above described categories of insurance or self-insurance commonly referred to as Non-Group Health Plans (NGHP) will not need to be reported under the Medicare Secondary Payer Act (MSP) via Section 111 and will also not be subject to recovery claims by Medicare under the MSP.

See this web link for the CMS Alert regarding these NGHP reporting thresholds:  https://www.cms.gov/files/document/2021-recovery-thresholds-certain-liability-insurance-no-fault-insurance-and-workers-compensation.pdf