Have you filed for a personal injury lawsuit? Then, don’t forget about setting up an MSA (Medicare Set-Aside) account at the earliest. It’s the most common mistake that many individuals make. MSA is essentially a fund which contains proceeds to cover your future medical expenses when compensation from the primary insurance provider has been fully utilized. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) intends to provide easy access to medical care and coverage to the individuals, and for doing that, it has designated MSAs as the preferred choice. If you don’t follow this step, you can deprive yourself of availing Medicare benefits and also risk your reserved fund to be considered as the available resources.
Future medical cost projection
For establishing an MSA account, you need to estimate the future medical expenses based on specific criteria. Since this is not possible for a layperson to do it, you can hire a reliable and professional law company, such as TD&P Consulting, for help. These companies recommend price estimation and proper allocation of funds after examining the care plan, life expectancy, and other such vital components.
Since these firms understand how CMS works and also possess sound knowledge of how workers’ compensation claims are settled, you would not have to worry about anything.
MSA administration
Administering MSA is not an easy job as it requires deft hands and a sharp mind to deal with it. Here are some rules that one needs to follow while maintaining an MSA account:
- Place funds in a separate account and report interest and other earnings on it to the tax department
- Use funds only for Medicare-related expenses that cover personal injuries. However, this also needs to be informed to CMS on time, stating how the fund has been used.
- When the MSA funds are exhausted, a report has to be created to inform the authorities of the same on time.
If you fail to conform to any of these or other such related guidelines, you can lose the chance of getting future Medicare coverage. But if you take professional assistance, you can benefit from it in many ways. Apart from managing your account, the attorney can help you coordinate payments with different agencies, such as Medicare, MSA, and insurance providers. He can also obtain discounts on medical treatment for you.
What many people don’t realize is that how not setting up an MSA account can impact their injury settlement cases. Also, since funds allocated in the MSA are a countable resource, if a separate trust is not established, they may have to let go of many benefits.
If you don’t want to suffer an additional loss in addition to the kind of pain you experienced in an accident, then make sure to onboard a reputable attorney, who can asses life care plans, healthcare delivery expenses, and so on. Don’t worry because there is no shortage of such expert professionals in the industry. However, be sure to choose someone excellent in strategy-making. The number of years of experience also matters here.