WCDefenseCA

Your humble blogger is reluctant to find blame with grown men and women who have a tender spot in their heart for the Easter Bunny, or a secret desire for a particularly generous visit from Santa Claus.  But your humble blogger finds it harder and harder to find folks that have a sincere belief that the California workers’ compensation system does not expose employers, insurers, and injured workers to some horrible, horrible consequences.

A Superior Court Judge recently unsealed a complaint making some pretty serious allegations, including the fact that a large group of hospitals, distributors, marketers, surgeons, chiropractors and other evil-doers have been manipulating, lying, coercing, etc. to get injured workers under the knife and needlessly operated on.  But what the procedures lacked in necessity, they compensated for in permanent consequences and expenses.  They have used counterfeit screws and rods, “runners, cappers and steerers,” and needless surgery prescription after surgery prescription to get injured workers to undergo operations that left them maimed and crippled.

Insurers and employers are forced to pay for these operations, injured workers undergo them and have to life with the permanent effects and… these conspirators enjoy restful nights on beds made of money.

Some of the defendants named in the complaint include:

Tri-City Regional Medical Center; Pacific Hospital of Long Beach; Riverside Community Hospital; St. Bernardine Medcial Center; Spinal Solutions LLC; International Implants, LLC; Comprehensive Intra-Operative Services, Inc.; Summit Medical Equipment; Platinum Medical Group; and the list goes on…

If you have a lien claim or even a medical bill from these facilities, perhaps it’s best to see where this case goes before sending a check.

Your humble blogger also has this thought to share with you: where are the lawyers?  Specifically, where are the applicants’ attorneys that flood the various Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board venues with their bleeding hearts and the plights of their clients.  Where are they when their clients are being pressured into undergoing an operation that will inflate their permanent disability rating (and, coincidentally, the attorney’s fee) but bring disaster to their prospects of future employment or even basic quality of life?

The applicants’ attorneys who have been around the block a time or two know what their clients are going in for, but because your garden-variety AA won’t meet with a client until the date of the Mandatory Settlement Conference, he won’t provide any advice about what’s really going to happen to Joe Schmoe after the knife hits the spine.

It’s stories like these that make your humble blogger hope against all hope that no family member or loved one ever has the misfortune of entering the workers’ compensation system.