The National Alliance of Medicare-Set Aside Professionals (NAMSAP) hosted its Sixth Annual Meeting and Educational Conference in Arlington, Virginia on September 30-October 1, 2010. The meeting demonstrated NAMSAP's expanding leadership role within both the special needs settlement planning and structured settlement industries.
The NAMSAP meeting also highlighted:
- The increasing importance and complexity of the Medicare Secondary Payer (MSP) statute for all personal injury stakeholders;
- The need for these personal injury stakeholders (and their professional associations) to cooperate politically and educationally;
- The challenges of integrating structured settlements with Medicare set-aside arrangements (MSAs) in the context of health care reform, CMS MSA regulations and related judicial rulings;
- The evolving business models, claim management strategies and professional skill sets which are now emerging to address these challenges.
According to its website, "NAMSAP is the only non-profit association exclusively addressing the issues and challenges of the Medicare Secondary Payer Statute and its impact on workers’ compensation and liability settlements". Founded in 2004, NAMSAP now has more than 500 members representing multiple professional disciplines. In additional to its annual conference, NAMSAP provides its members with other educational resources including a popular list serve and frequent webinars. NAMSAP's political priorities include its membership in the Medicare Advocacy Recovery Coalition (MARC).
The NAMSAP educational conference featured the following topics and speakers:
- Keynote speaker - Eric Vaughn, Executive Director of the National Structured Settlement Trade Association (NSSTA), proposed greater cooperation between NAMSAP and the structured settlement industry to "improve and grow" both the MSA and structured settlement markets. Vaughn urged NAMSAP members to become more active in federal lobbying and suggested strategies for achieving lobbying success.
- Professional administration panel - Rob Brown, Hany Abdelsayed, and Bob Barson set a new standard for successfully engaging audience participation as they discussed the challenges of post-settlement administrative compliance and why post-settlement compliance is important for all MSA stakeholders.
- Structured settlement panel - Patrick Hindert, Christine Phillips, Brian Fillion,and Jeffrey Swigart reviewed statutory history, CMS requirements and recommended documentation for structured settlements and MSAs. They discussed best practices, provided case examples and explained why structured settlements produce consistent cost savings in the MSA context.
- Legal update panel - Mark Popolizio, Jill Schroeder and Martin Cassavoy presented a summary analysis of several recent MSP cases including: Hadden v. United States; Haro v. Sibelius; United States v. Harris; and United States v. Stricker;
- MSA case study - Fran Provenzano developed and administered a competitive MSA case study exercise where teams of audience participants developed MSA allocations and projected future medical needs based upon medical records from an actual case. Team results were then compared with the allocations and projected costs CMS approved.
- Pharmacy panel - Dane Higgins, Matt Larkin, and Phil Walls discussed off-label use of medications and the impact of the May 14, 2010 CMS memorandum.
- Congressional panel - Congressional Assistant Laura Bozell and lobbyist Eric Rasmussen supplemented Eric Vaughn's keynote address with their own analysis of the upcoming 2010 federal elections and their recommendations for how best to lobby members of Congress and their staffs.
- Rated age discussion panel - Ismael Acevedo, Dan Durbin, John Meaney, and David Korch summarized annuity pricing and the role of rated ages in the settlement process. They highlighted problems for annuity providers and their structured settlement agents created by recent CMS rated age requirements and offered ideas for improving the rated age process for MSAs.
- MARC update - Roy Franco, co-chairman and founder of MARC, summarized MARC's 2010 accomplishments and legislative initiatives and highlighted continuing problems created by the MMSEA legislation.
Additional reasons for the success of the NAMSAP 2010 educational program were the diversity and intellectual strength of the audience and the quality and time allocated to the several exhibitors. In addition to the presenters, several leaders from both NSSTA and SSP attended the NAMSAP conference. Other attendees included defense attorneys, plaintiff attorneys, special needs attorneys, MSA attorneys, MSA administrators, MSA allocators, and rehabilitation specialists, as well as structured settlement underwriters, annuity providers and consultants.
NAMSAP announced their new officers and directors during the meeting:
- President - Michael Westcott
- Vice President - Jon Gice
- Treasurer - David Korch
- Secretary - Douglas Shaw
- Additional Directors - Barbara Bate; Ben Basista; Robert Brown; Raphael Gonzolez; Mark Popolizio; Fran Jacoby Provenzano; and Leslie Schumacher.
For S2KM reporting about prior NAMSAP conferences, see S2KM's structured settlement wiki.
For Patrick Hindert's NAMSAP structured settlement power point, see the TSSG website.
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