Today, the Times continues its series on workers’ comp in New York. This piece is slightly more claimant leaning than yesterday’s but still gives some excellent insight on the comp system and how lousy it actually is. It rightly notes that physician exams paid for by insurers (laughingly called independent medical examinations) are frequently skewed in favor of… wait for it… the insured. They touch on but don’t go into great detail that this is also very true of physician exams that are arranged by the claimant’s attorney which are skewed in favor of the claimant (there’s a pattern here). There are physicians who do work for insurers/employers and ones who work for the claimant’s bar who are not the least bit predictable in what they’ll say regarding disability status. Unfortunately, the same can be said for many hearing officers here in Ohio. I’ll go one step further and say that it’s not limited to Ohio as I’ve had first hand experience with this in Pennsylvania. What started as a no fault insurance system to 1) take care work workers who are injured on the job and 2) indemnify employers from being sued for those injuries has turned into such a monstrosity that the original intent can’t even be recognized.
At our firm, we do minimal workers’ compensation work but do a fair amount of litigation consultation. This is split between plaintiff and defense cases. I think the most important thing to do is to remain intellectually honest in the work you turn out. You only get one shot at credibility and when it’s gone, it’s gone. In the cases sited in the Times series, it’s really gone.
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