Is Workers Comp Automatically A Good Deal?
Posted on: 15 June 2016
The Workers Compensation insurance program (workers comp) is designed as a safety net to help workers recover and return to work. For injuries that can be fixed with a few days at home or in the hospital, it's an easy situation of having your medical bills paid for by worker's comp insurance and a portion of your pay delivered without having to go to work. Unfortunately, not all injuries are so convenient in their healing. If you're not sure about your future health or unable to maintain a living on workers comp, here's a few details of what you can do beyond the standard system.
Does Workers Comp Help For Major Injuries?
If your injury has lead to (or could lead to) lifelong disability, there are disability options available. The problem is assuming that the system knows your injury's potential and will always work in your best interests.
Any insurance system exists to provide assistance while staying profitable. This means that while you'll get the basic assistance guaranteed by the compensation system, you're also expected to get off the system and sign away the problem from that way forward. It isn't impossible to demand disability compensation after you've signed everything, but it becomes significantly harder.
Every state is different, but permanent partial disability under workers compensation is cited to be around $32,000 by the Social Security Administration. This payoff may be enough if the rest of your year's pay is around that amount of if you're expected to recover at some point, but what if your disability isn't partial?
For total disabilities that are permanent, you'll want a lawyer to get more than just a year's cash settlement. Even for partial disabilities or temporary disabilities that haven't recovered yet, you need to keep your legal options open.
What Are The Other Options?
A workers comp lawyer can help you negotiate terms such as increased pay, additional medical compensation, vocational rehabilitation and other options to keep you viable in the workforce and comfortable as you recover. The idea of a single, giant payment that will keep you satisfied for life is an option, but there's no reason to bet on such a lottery alone when the other options can be planned at the same time.
You should also consider other types of legal action. Was the workplace injury purely an accident caused by working conditions? If an individual caused the injury, you could seek personal injury claim action against that individual. Especially in cases where the workers is injured by a member of the public, additional legal action is a viable way to get a better payment that the company simply isn't liable for.
Contact a workers comp lawyer to discuss your options and to keep all doors open in case the injury situation isn't a simple case of workers compensation. Law firms such as Prediletto, Halpin, Scharnikow & Nelson, P.S. may be helpful.
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