U.S. Seeking Share of Payout on Implants

Lawyers with the U.S. Department of Justice have argued since the settlement was announced in 1994 that taxpayers should be reimbursed for Medicare payments made on behalf of women who claimed implants caused them to get sick. Lower courts have disagreed, but on January 10, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments on the matter. Exactly how much is at stake is unclear. Because of the intimate nature of the breast implants, the settlement kept the names of the plaintiffs confidential. The government claims that this makes it impossible to figure out which members of the class received the Medicare benefits it wants reimbursed.

Lawyers for the implant makers respond that the government has much of that information in its own files and that it failed to ask for the information in a timely or systematic way. Moreover, they argue that federal law does not entitle the government to collect insurance reimbursements from defendants. A federal judge in the Northern District of Alabama, where the class case was based, agreed with the defendants and dismissed the government's suit in 2001 because the government could not identify the women who got Medicare money.