What do you really want out of Workers’ Compensation? I’ve spoken to thousands of injured people and their families and I’ve asked most of them that question. “To get better, to be able to return to work, and to enjoy my family again.” Those are the most common answers. In over fifteen years, I’ve never had anyone tell me he wanted to beat the system or make a bunch of money.
So it is disappointing that so many insurance adjusters, human resource directors, safety managers, and politicians think that many injured workers are just doing it for the money. It’s so bad that a well-known orthopedic surgeon in Raleigh recently spoke to a group of defense attorneys and insurance adjusters and said that he believed that many injured workers would have unnecessary surgery just to avoid working and to get more money.
What scares the daylights out of me is knowing that injured workers – who know a lot more than I do about real life: driving trucks, running a knitting machine, building a house, and more – are going to see this doctor, and others like him, every day because they don’t know their rights under the workers’ compensation laws.It’s not that we’re smarter than they are. It’s simply that we study workers’ compensation all day long — and we’ve been doing this for many years now.
Protect yourself, your family, and your home. You may not need to hire an attorney but you certainly need information and someone to help you think through your case with you.
This article was written by Todd P. Oxner
