On September 23, I posted about H.R. 1063, a bill introduced in the House titled the Strengthening Medicare And Repaying Taxpayers Act of 2011, or "SMART Act." This bill helps to replenish the Medicare Trust Fund, make Medicare work for seniors instead of the other way around, and reduces paperwork burdens for businesses. To reiterate: Under federal law, Medicare pays the medical bills while a recipient is injured and sues the other party, acting as the "secondary payer" for the bills pending the outcome of any legal action. Federal law requires the injured person's attorney to repay Medicare upon a judgment or settlement, before any funds are given to the injured senior. But the federal agency running Medicare hinders the repayment process, so it can take years to finally pay off even the smallest claim, and the senior doesn't see a dime of the settlement until that payoff. Moreover, the feds impose ridiculous reporting burdens and penalties on businesses under the same secondary payer law. The SMART Act streamlines the process, establishes real deadlines for the federal agency, and enables businesses to meet CMS reporting requirements while maintaining data security.
The leading sponsor in the House is Rep. Tim Murphy, a Republican representing the 18th District in Pennsylvania. Rep. Murphy serves on the key Energy & Commerce Committee in the House. I first met and worked with him while he was on the House Financial Services Committee, where I was the senior Republican oversight counsel from 2001 through 2003. He's a career psychologist, which can come in pretty handy when dealing with House Members and staff of both parties. I've seen that Rep. Murphy strives to work with Members on both sides of the aisle, while maintaining core conservative principles of limiting the size and scope of the federal government. So it's no surprise to me to see him leading the most bipartisan Medicare bill in Congress, with co-sponsors from Reps. Ron Paul and Allen West on the right to Reps. Diana DeGette and Tammy Baldwin on the left.
Rep. Murphy discussed H.R. 1063 and other issues on January 10 in an interview on the nationally syndicated What's Up radio program, hosted by Terry Lowry. In part 2 of the interview (download here), he noted, "Now it's interesting: defense lawyers, plaintiffs' lawyers,, retailers, stores, restaurants, everybody wants to fix this problem, except Medicare. And so there are hundreds of millions of dollars that sit out there that take forever for the bureaucracy to try and claim, and some of the sad news about this is that sometimes what Medicare does, they will sue some elderly person or ask for the money to come back from the elderly person, and say that if you don't pay us back, we're going to take it out of your Social Security... So we're trying to correct this..."
As Terry Lowry noted, Rep. Murphy has "a boatload of common sense," especially on this issue. This bill corrects the inefficiencies of a huge government bureaucracy affecting millions of Americans and the business community. The SMART Act and Rep. Murphy deserve strong support from all 7th Amendment advocates.
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