Medical Funders

I'd never heard of medical funders until I read this article on Reuters. What these funders do is purchase medical bills at a deep discount from physicians, hospitals and others who have provided care to patients involved in personal injury litigation. They may also loan the litigants travel and expense money at a high rate of interest. It can be a lucrative business. When a patient’s lawsuit settles, the medical funder stakes a claim to part of the settlement by placing a lien for the full amount of the surgical bill. The funder’s profit lies in the difference between what it pays the medical provider to buy the bill and what it is able to recover from the patient’s settlement.

It's a pretty good business that has become very good. In the past most funders bought bills owed by uninsured or underinsured patients with slip-and-fall, car accident and workers compensation suits. But now the money is in funding surgeries for patients involved in mass litigation over drugs and medical devices. 

And the really hot area is in operations to remove pelvic implants from women suing device makers. Now there are about 100,000 suits in state and federal courts. The cases so far have gone in favor of the women, who have won multimillion-dollar verdicts in 10 of the 13 suits that have gone to trial against manufacturers since 2012.