Terrible Workers’ Compensation Insurers and Adjusters
Let me ask you to picture this …
You have surgery. In this surgery, doctors are literally touching and manipulating your bones. Metal that these doctors had previously placed in your bones was now be taken out. When they were finished manipulating your bones, they sowed two sides of your skin together with some form of medical string.
Then after a day in the hospital, you are sent home to recover.
Picture it. What would you be doing?
If you are like me, you envision a bed, a TV, a book, and pain medication. Of those four things, the one that is the only given is the pain medication. Two days ago your skin was open for the world to see while the doctors were touching your bones. Today you’re at home. Can you imagine that without pain medication?
If you can, good for you. You are a tougher individual than I.
An Injured Worker is Subject to the Whims of the Insurance Company
But if you’re my client, you have a non-responsive adjuster. The adjuster has been horrendously unresponsive throughout the duration of the case. The adjuster has been short and rude. Forget empathy, let’s just have neutral. Let’s have a robot. At least then you wouldn’t be subject to the adjuster’s ill temper, maladjustment to life, or bad day. (Bad day everyday for months on end.)
If you’re my client, you’re sitting in bed without pain medication. 48 hours post surgery. The surgery was approved, but, for some reason, the prescription was not. What’s the reason? Who knows?
What am I left to do?
There is little I can do. I can cajole. I can advocate for my client. I can push. I can file issues. I can ask for an emergency hearing. Best case scenario – a few weeks. You think that will help my client?
What Do I Need?
I need some sort of bad faith provisions, whereby egregious behavior by workers’ comp insurers is sanctioned. I need to be able to get relief for my client. It’s what I’m paid to do.
Shy of that, I need to be able to speak out, I guess. I need to be able to exercise my First Amendment rights on behalf of this client and on behalf of injured workers.
-One Frustrated Workers’ Comp Attorney
