Tell Congress: Fix the Medicare Secondary Payer System

Create Your Letter

We encourage you to update and personalize the draft letter below to send to your Member of Congress.

We will deliver to the U.S. House and Senate based on your street address.

As someone who has experienced the inadequacy of the current Medicare Secondary Payer (MSP) system first-hand, I am writing to urge you to co-sponsor the Secondary Payer Advancement, Rationalization and Clarification Act (SPARC) Act which aims to ensure that the MSP policy works effectively for beneficiaries, taxpayers, and other stakeholders in medical settlements. The current MSP system places unnecessary strain on everyone involved in the process as a result of the lack of clarity surrounding which entity is ultimately responsible for the payment of beneficiaries’ medical bills. The SPARC Act helps correct this confused dynamic by incorporating common sense principles such as guaranteed access to care, fairness, certainty, and fiscal responsibility.

The MSP system is intended to ensure that the Medicare program and Part D prescription drug plans (PDPs) do not waste taxpayer dollars by reimbursing healthcare expenses for which another party is legally responsible. Instead, MSP has spiraled into a chaotic regulatory scheme that creates paralyzing uncertainty for parties in medical liability settlements, often resulting in the denial of coverage for beneficiaries and heightening costs for taxpayers and businesses. For the nearly 50 million Medicare beneficiaries across the country, this is simply unnecessary and unacceptable.

Advocates for MSP reform have worked for years to correct this unsatisfactory status quo – and it is time for Congress to act. The bipartisan legislation sponsored by your colleagues, Reps. Tim Murphy and Ron Kind, makes three key improvements to the current MSP law:

•	Aligns incentives so that PDPs only pursue those claims where a recovery will exceed the cost of collection.
•	Requires CMS to provide PDPs with timely access to settlement data, so that they can quickly assert any claims for recovery at the time of settlement. 
•	Directs PDPs to instruct pharmacies to bill entities that have accepted an ongoing responsibility to pay for medical benefits, thus avoiding Plans paying for drugs when others are responsible.

Each year, 2.7 million Medicare claims involving seniors and disabled beneficiaries are reported to the CMS settlement database. To ensure that these beneficiaries receive timely access to the care they need, we urge you to co-sponsor the SPARC Act (H.R. 1122).

Your Contact Information

Prefix

First Name

Last Name

Street

City

State

Zip Code

Remember me.

Tell Congress: Fix the Medicare Secondary Payer System

Create Your Letter

Your Contact Information

Join the National Campaign for Secondary Payer Reform today!