Set-Asides Without Safe Harbor

In May 2013, this blog reported that a New Jersey court had done what the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) declined to do. In Duhamell v. Renal Care Group East, Inc., 431 N.J. Super. 93 (Law Div. 2012), the Superior Court in Atlantic County approved two self-administered Medicare set-asides after CMS refused to review them, citing limited resources. Thirteen years later, CMS still will not grant a safe harbor outside its own review process, but it now sees nearly every set-aside that gets created. For injured workers in New Jersey, that shift changes the calculus of every lump-sum settlement.