Workers Compensation Claims
Workers Compensation in the News
For hardworking Ohioans, it's hard to put much stock in the performance of the
Ohio Bureau of Workers Comp lately. After $12 million in public money turned up missing in the "Coingate" scandal earlier this year, the plot has recently thickened. Republican fundraiser
Tom Noe, who solicited and administered the BWC investment in rare coins, was recently indicted on federal charges of
laundering money into President Bush's 2004 re-election campaign. Current investigations are underway to determine if Noe used BWC money to make
illegal campaign contributions to support GOP campaigns.
If these charges are true, then there is a crueler irony beneath the graft and corruption committed in Coingate. The use of BWC money to support political campaigns, platforms and agendas that are philosophically opposed to protecting the rights and benefits of the injured is an affront to Ohio workers. In a time when Ohio's economy is extremely fragile, and when healthcare costs and cost-of-living expenses are rising rapidly, those officials we entrust with administering public dollars must learn to
practice the fiscal discipline they so often preach.
Ohio's injured workers shouldn't pay the price for the BWC's recent financial bungling. But without effective
legal counsel, many of them surely will. If you've suffered an injury on the job and are struggling with your
workers compensation claim, Toledo attorney Charles Boyk can help you today.
Read more about the
Coingate scandal.
Workers Compensation Lawyer for Ohio
You gave your employers your best. It's only fair that they do the same for you.
According to Greek Mythology, a man named Sisyphus was found guilty of offending the Gods. The Gods sentenced him to a punishment of rolling a boulder up a hill. The catch was that whenever Sisyphus got near the top, the boulder rolled all the way back down to the bottom and he had to start all over again.
Sisyphus' punishment is very similar to what thousands of Americans have to go through when they are trying to get insurance companies to honor their
workers compensation claims. Every day, injured workers deal with doctors handpicked by the insurance companies, second and third opinions, constant delaying tactics, and ethically questionable
private investigators who are trained to ensnare workers in technicalities that could allow the insurance companies to deny the claim.
Insurance companies also have enormous public relations machines that gives the public the perception that most
workers comp claims are based on fraud and deceit. If you have been injured on the job and are unable to work, you will have to face an organized and well-financed team of doctors, lawyers and private investigators just to get barely enough money to put food on the table and provide for their families.
The delaying tactics used by the insurance companies are legendary. Your insurance company is going to treat you like you are a fraud. Every visit to the doctor, every prescription, every recommendation for treatment and every visit to a specialist is going to be contested, appealed, and buried under mountains of paperwork for no other reason then to frustrate the claimant into giving up.
While the claimant is waiting through all these delays, this gives the insurance company plenty of time to hire private investigators to keep an eye on you. If that sounds like we’re being paranoid, believe us, we aren’t. This is big business in the
Private Investigations field; so much so that there is actually a
textbook published on how to catch “insurance abusers.” Something as trivial as being caught not limping as badly as the doctor described is often enough for the insurance company to cancel your benefits.
Another tactic is to delve deeply into your personal history, where total irrelevancies from your past can take on important new meanings. For instance, one claimant who was trying to get workers comp because he was exposed to toxic fumes at a power plant for over 18 years had his claim denied because it was discovered that he had a drinking problem. The fact that this drinking problem had been dealt with and overcome years before didn’t matter at all to the insurers. They saw an opportunity and ran with it.
If you get injured on the job, you will most likely have to see a doctor that is on the insurance company payroll. These doctors will quite often offer what is called
palliative treatment, which is basically the most minimal and least expensive treatment that the doctor can get away with.
These doctors aren’t doing this because they are heartless or are ignoring their Hippocratic Oath; they are doing it because they have to do SOMETHING while they fill out the paperwork, tell the injured worker to petition for a hearing, and jump through a substantial number of hoops in order to get the insurance company to pay for the more expensive treatment that is needed.
These delays can last for days, weeks, or sometimes even months. There is also the added nightmare of having to pay for specialists or for rehabilitative care. One physical therapist described getting
enough money from the insurer to cover only a weeks worth of sessions. By the time the paperwork was filled out, the depositions were given and the funds were reluctantly granted for another week's worth of treatment, so much time had passed that the physical gains made by the patient in the first week were essentially worthless, and he had to start all over again.
It doesn’t have to be like this. We know the insurance company tactics, we know the doctors, we know how the investigators work, and we know what it takes to get you the treatment and settlement that you deserve. If you or a loved one has suffered injuries on the job, contact Charles Boyk today for help.
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