NYT Reports All-Metal Hip Failures to Cost Billions of Dollars

After the DePuy hip recall began, people began asking what its total cost would amount to. Because DePuy Orthopaedics’ ASR XL Acetabular System and ASR Hip Resurfacing System fail at unusually high rates according to studies and artificial joint registries outside the United States, it stood to reason that the number of subsequent revision procedures would cost recipients, insurers, and Medicare large amounts of money. Recently, the New York Times published an article predicting that the sum would run into the billions.

Faulty Hips Set off ‘Financial Scramble’

The Times article points out that neither the U.S. government nor artificial joint manufacturers track hip replacement post-market outcomes. As a result, one doctor, Art Sedrakyan, of Cornell University places the number of necessary revision procedures into the tens of thousands. This is after several years in which metal-on-metal hips constituted one-third of the 250,000 hip replacement procedures performed annually. 40,000 people received DePuy’s ASR models in the United States, and already 3,500 have filed lawsuits against the company and its parent, Johnson & Johnson. An additional 560 lawsuits concern the “uncemented” version of DePuy’s Pinnacle Hip Replacement System. The Times characterized these activities as a “financial scramble.”

Insurers and Medicare to Seek Reimbursement

Injured recipients aren’t the only ones who want their money back plus damages. The Times states that their insurers and Medicare will also want to be repaid after covering the costs of the initial implantation procedure. To do this, rather than file their own lawsuits against DePuy, insurers inform recipients’ lawyers that they will seek reimbursement from any judgments or DePuy hip settlements they obtain. Medicare, for its part, benefits from new laws that allow it to recover money it spent on defective medical devices.

RLG Helps Recipients Obtain Maximum Compensation

It makes sense that if an insurance company or Medicare paid for a person’s initial hip replacement procedure, it should be reimbursed if the device turns out to be defective. The recipient, meanwhile, is entitled to compensation for the harm he or she suffered. The question is, how much will that be? Recipients might receive a higher amount of compensation from a hip replacement lawsuit than by using DePuy’s recall claims system. A hip replacement lawsuit allows plaintiffs to recover additional types of damages that DePuy will not reimburse, such as full medical costs, lost wages, transportation costs, and damages for pain and suffering. If you received a recalled hip implant and believe it injured you, click on this link or call 1-877-619-5087 and one of the Rottenstein Law Group’s DePuy ASR hip recall lawyers will reach out to you as soon as possible. For more information, download this free DePuy ASR brochure.