In its complaint, the company said that it submitted roughly 500 such requests each month during the past several years, and that these requests were filled without charge.

Earlier this year, however, the SSA made procedural changes that effectively reduced the ability of companies such as Health Advocates to obtain that information. Under the new rules, the request for eligibility information is required to be made at the SSA branch office nearest the individual's home, and the Administration has also begun charging a $49 fee to fill each request.

"Despite the existence of a Medicare set-aside industry since 2001, and despite the enormous cost to the federal government of failure to protect Medicare's secondary payer status through adequate set-aside arrangements, SSA does not have a centralized or regional system for handling information requests related to Medicare set-asides and has no coherent national policy on the subject," the company said in its complaint. "Instead, each SSA field office exercises standardless discretion to honor or refuse information requests. Health Advocates' information requests have been denied repeatedly by various field offices, despite Health Advocates' submission of an official SSA request form signed by the beneficiary, and even when the requests relate solely to beneficiaries who reside in the geographic area of the relevant field office."

June Simpson, president of Health Advocates Inc., said it is "unfortunate" that the company "has been forced to file a lawsuit against the Social Security Administration to compel them to provide the information needed to reimburse Medicare for expenses that were not their responsibility, and more important, to avoid payment of future medical expenses that are not Medicare's responsibility."