We have discovered that old trends die hard. For example, many municipal entities, such as cities, counties, school districts and county own hospitals, decided in the 1980's that they would "self-insure" their health insurance plans. These municipal entities would use the premium payments of their employees to put into a pot that would pay the medical expenses of the employees. An insurance company would oversee the plan and pay the medical expense allowed under the plan.
If an employee was injured by the negligence of someone else then the plan would demand that the injured worker "repay" any of the medical expense that the plan made. Kansas law prohibited insurance companies from requesting reimbursement. This was a way to get around Kansas law.
In 1994, the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled that these municipal entities could request reimbursement because these plans were not "insurance".
Recently, we represented a young woman who received her insurance from a school district. We received a call from a business representing the school district requesting that our client repay over $50,000.00 of her settlement to this plan. We looked at the law and realized that the legislature had changed the law since the last time we had a case like this. The law no longer allows the plan to be repaid so this increased our client's settlement from approximately $13,000 to $63,000.
We also realized that many firms mistakenly repaid this money. We want to return this money to its rightful owner. Therefore, if you know anybody who worked for a municipal entity and paid part of his or her settlement to the employer in the last 5 years please call we may be able to help.
