Federal law makes Medicare's recovery rights mandatory; Medicaid and private plans assert similar rights. Lien resolution — auditing, negotiating, and paying these claims — is a standard, often months-long step between settlement and distribution.
Liens are one of the four layers between gross settlement and your net: attorney fee, common-benefit holdback (in MDLs), case expenses, then liens. Our settlement calculator's fee-stack view shows how the layers interact.
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