Honorable Lawmakers,

When the Exclusive Remedy was passed, the idea was that we would exchange our the right to sue in exchange for needed medical and indemnity benefits right away without question.

Since the original law came out, the legislatures of every state have taken away more and more benefits from injured workers much of time any legislation has been passed.

In the beginning the comp system worked very well. There was not a lot of litigation involved because the carriers were not denying so many of the serious injuries. They were not trying to starve out injured workers and transfer their expenses over to other insurances and federal and state agencies. They were not robbing employers and injured workers of the benefits they contracted to provide.

As time has gone by, the legislature has modified the workers compensation system much to the satisfaction and greed of the insurers. The result has been the need by injured workers for more and more litigation to force insurers to meet their obligations in the contracts they signed with employers.

The legislature itself is in fact a large contributing factor why the workers compensation system is failing. Other factors include greedy and unethical carriers, fraud by all parties involved, lack of enforcement and regulation of the insurers, and the many unnecessary mediations and hearings for benefits the law has already said an injured worker is entitled to.

I would like to know why it is injured workers have to get an attorney at all. In all reality we should be given benefits immediately and if the employer/carrier wants to challenge the compensability or degree of an injury, it is they who should have to go to court and prove they have reason to deny benefits.

For now the whole system is working backwards. In the workers compensation system, the injured worker is guilty until proven innocent; a claimant is considered by carriers disqualified for benefits until proven qualified by a court! The result? Claimants must repeatedly, consistently and predictably go to court or file petition for benefits because of denials for treatment and/or indemnity benefits. How many times do the carriers get to put the injured worker on trial? Why is it that even when the court finds an injured worker PTD that the injured worker still has to fight for every doctor, medication, and prescribed treatment their doctor orders?

It seems that the exclusive remedy is a de facto remedy to allow insurers to avoid their contractual obligations to the injured worker!

The carrier not only gets to choose the treating doctor but also gets to deny everything the doctor prescribes. In many cases the doctor stops seeing the patient because the insurer denies and denies necessary treatments to help the patient or to help the doctor define the degree of injury. Many times the doctor is forced to put the injured worker at MMI because there is nothing else s/he feels s/he can do for the injured worker as long as the carrier is denying everything s/he prescribes to help the injured worker.

The carriers continually harass our doctors by asking for everything they have in their files on us if the doctor doesn't give a diagnosis the carrier wants. They manipulate the records they send to the doctor, they have phone conversations with them implying we are frauds or that we are exaggerating the degree of our injuries, and they refuse to pay or delay payment to our doctors for the services provided. Doctors are tricked into signing unnecessary paperwork which is then used against the patient.

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So where in all of this is the injured worker getting the benefit of the exclusive remedy? The carriers have broken their contract in this agreement by denying the treatment that was promised and provided for under the law.

It is up to our elected officials to put a stop to the manipulation by carriers of this agreement.

It is up to the Division of Workers Compensation to enforce the law.

Injured workers want either immediate treatment and benefits as promised or the nullification of exclusive remedy.

If the carriers do not uphold their ends of the agreements, then the injured worker should be free to pursue any course of action necessary to get what they are entitled to including tort actions against all parties which the exclusive remedy protects. There should be no caps or restrictions put on awards to injured workers and the case should be held before a full jury of their peers.

Once again - Iinjured workers want what they were guaranteed in the exclusive remedy and if the carrier fails to provide it, then we want back our full rights to a tort case with all the trimmings, including awards for pain and suffering.

Under exclusive remedy, the carrier should not be allowed, as frequently occurs presently, to arbitrarily deny or cut off benefits until and unless a judge determines there is justification to do so.

Just to be clear, the adjudication or determination of the status of a case by a JCC should be a full hearing with evidence provided by both sides and not just a decision rendered by a JCC with no hearing involved. This step would help stop the gaslighting or starve-out tactics the carriers use today as well as reduce the amount of litigation required in the process. This would also help to prevent the carrier from transferring their costs over to other insurances as well as to state and federal agencies. It would help reduce the number of injured workers that become PTD due to lack of or delayed treatment, a situation which is the opposite of the intent of exclusive remedy.

In the exclusive remedy, the provision was that in exchange for our right to sue we would get immediate benefits, no questions asked.

It seems to me if the legislature is going to uphold the exclusive remedy, it should demand that all conditions in it are met and not just the conditions that benefit the carriers.

Injured workers having to wait for years for benefits was never part of the package.

Please either uphold all of the exclusive remedy or declare it null and void and give injured workers back their right to sue.

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