Tag Archives: Workers’ Injury Law and Advocacy Group

Fighting For Your Benefits – Protecting Our Safety Net

As an attorney who has been practicing in the field of Workers’ Compensation for close to 30 years, it has been a privilege and an honor to represent the working men and women of New York. As the daughter of both a retired firefighter and retired teacher, I see the sacrifices that most working men and women make in order to provide for their families and create a better life for their children. We all have similar long-term goals of being able to earn enough of a nest egg to retire and enjoy our “golden years”.  No one goes to work expecting that they will sustain an injury that will not only change the course of their employment, but may change the course of their lives. Even less expected is the bureaucratic maze most will have to navigate for benefits to which they are entitled.

Injured workers in this country have seen their weekly benefits capped, their medical benefits slashed, and their medications limited based upon the opinions of those who may not even examine them but only review records. Injured workers have been the pawn in political battles throughout the country.  Benefits are seen as too expensive or excessive, and are described as the reason businesses cannot thrive or survive as premiums have become so expensive because of the high costs of claims. Injured workers are sometimes seen as “gaming the system” by fraudulently obtaining and keeping Workers’ Compensation benefits beyond their need. There could be nothing farther from the truth.

One of the things I am proud of in my legal career is that I am past president of the Workers’ Injury Law and Advocacy Group (WILG), an organization of attorneys who have dedicated their practices to representing the needs of injured workers’ and their families. Our mission statement notes that “our members are committed to improving the quality of legal representation to those injured on the job or victims of occupational illness by superior legal education and my keeping informed of legislative and judicial proceedings”. We do this by keeping up with trends throughout the country that impact injured workers and might end up coming to the states in which we practice.

While injured workers rarely have the finances to take on some of the very wealthy and deep-pocketed business and insurance industry groups, our organization has found that in many instances we can fight back by having knowledge and knowing the facts. My colleague and another past president of WILG, Leonard Jernigan, has for the last decade or so put the perception of “gaming the system” to the test. In his most recent report, he notes that the top 10 cases of fraud resulted in almost $100 million in lost revenue and that not one of those cases involved the actual worker. This is not out of the ordinary. While there are those workers who clearly fabricate an injury or exaggerate its seriousness, they are in the minority. Most men and women do not want to be injured, nor do they want to stay out of work when they are. As the recent government shut down showed, there are many people in this country who live paycheck to paycheck. Any loss of income creates major financial hardship for injured workers and their families, not to mention the psychological impact created by the mere thought of losing their places of residence or their dreams for their future. We must remember that while injured workers in this country are a minority of the population, in the blink of an eye, we too can become a part of this very unfortunate club.

 

Catherine M. Stanton is a senior partner in the law firm of Pasternack Tilker Ziegler Walsh Stanton & Romano, LLP. She focuses on the area of Workers’ Compensation, having helped thousands of injured workers navigate a highly complex system and obtain all the benefits to which they were entitled. Ms. Stanton has been honored as a New York Super Lawyer, is the past president of the New York Workers’ Compensation Bar Association, the immediate past president of the Workers’ Injury Law and Advocacy  Group, and is an officer in several organizations dedicated to injured workers and their families. She can be reached at 800.692.3717.

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Call “Reform” What It Is: Death By A Thousand Cuts For Workers’ Rights

This week I attended the 20th anniversary of the Workers’ Injury Law and Advocacy Group (WILG) in Chicago. I am a proud past president of this group – the only national Workers’ Compensation bar association dedicated to representing injured workers.  

As an attorney who has represented injured workers for more than 25 years, I have seen their rights and benefits shrink under the guise of “reform”. After the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, which killed almost 150 women and girls, workplace safety and Workers’ Compensation laws were enacted. For the next half century or so, many protections and safeguards were implemented. However, many of these reforms were not sufficient, and in 1972, the National Commission on State Workmen’s Compensation Laws, appointed by then-President Nixon, issued a report noting that state Workers’ Compensation laws were neither adequate nor equitable. This led to a decade when most states significantly improved their laws. 

Unfortunately, there has once more been a steady decline in benefits to injured workers, again under the guise of reform. One major argument is that many workers are faking their injuries or they just want to take time off from work. There was even a recent ad campaign in which a young girl was crying because her father was going to jail for faking an injury. Workers’ Compensation fraud does exist, but the high cost of insurance fraud is not as a result of workers committing fraud.

A colleague of mine compiled a list of the top 10 Workers’ Compensation fraud cases in 2014 in which he noted that the top 10 claims of fraud cost taxpayers well more than $75 million dollars with $450,000 of the total amount resulting from a worker committing insurance fraud. That leaves $74.8 million as a result of non-employee fraud, including overbilling and misclassification of workers. We are told that insurance costs are too high; yet, according to the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) in 2014, estimates show that private Workers’ Compensation carriers will have pulled in $39.3 billion in written premiums, the highest since they began keeping data in 1990. More premiums result in higher net profits. Despite this, many states have implemented changes in their Workers’ Compensation systems aimed at reducing costs to the employer. The end results, however, is that fewer benefits are given to the injured worker and more profits go to the insurance companies.

In New York, one of the reform measures increased the amount of money per week to injured workers but limited the amount of weeks they can receive these benefits with the idea that they will return to work once their benefits run out. Additionally, limitations have been placed on the amount and types of treatment that injured workers may receive. Again, this is with the notion that once treatment ends, injured workers miraculously are healed and will not need additional treatment. In reality, those injured who can’t return to work receive benefits from other sources from state and federal governments at the taxpayer’s expense.  This is what is known as cost shifting, as those really responsible to pay for benefits – the insurance companies who collect the premiums from the employers – have no further liability. The reformers of 100 years ago would be appalled at what is happening to injured workers and their families today. It is time that those who are generating profits at the expense of injured workers do what is fair and just – provide prompt medical care and wage replacement to injured workers for as long as they are unable to work.

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Catherine M. Stanton is a senior partner in the law firm of Pasternack Tilker Ziegler Walsh Stanton & Romano, LLP. She focuses on the area of Workers’ Compensation, having helped thousands of injured workers navigate a highly complex system and obtain all the benefits to which they were entitled. Ms. Stanton has been honored as a New York Super Lawyer, is the past president of the New York Workers’ Compensation Bar Association, the immediate past president of the Workers’ Injury Law and Advocacy Group, and is an officer in several organizations dedicated to injured workers and their families. She can be reached at 800.692.3717.

 

Prior results do not guarantee outcomes.
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