Ditching Medicare Part A May Have Financial Reprucussions, Warns Lawyer

By Ravi Bhatia, Talk Radio News Service

Kent Masterson Brown, lead attorney for plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the Department of Health and Human Services, warned Tuesday that seniors who attempt to leave their Medicare policies may face financial repercussions.

“[The three internal rules of the Social Security Administration] allow you to get out of Medicare Part A, but if you do, you lose all your social security retirement benefits, and you are required to repay every benefit that had been paid to you,” Brown said. “They won’t let you out until all the money has been collected.”

The lawsuit, Hall V. Sebelius, seeks to prohibit the Social Security Administration and the Dept. of Health and Human Services from requiring seniors to take part Medicare A through policies which Masterson contends were improperly implemented.

“The frightening thing about a case like this is an agency that’s just doing anything it wants,” Brown said. “Keeping agencies in tow, making them do only what Congress has dictated is fundamentally essential to the republic.”

Government lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case in May on the grounds that the plaintiffs have not been harmed by the policies and hence have no standing to sue. In addition, the lawyers argued that the plaintiffs have not exhausted all of the administrative remedies available to them before suing.