Legal Question in Workers Comp in California

You may "SETTLE" your rights to future medical treatment. That is done with a Compromise & RElease Agreement.

I tell my client's it's a sort of 'Divorce' --- the other side comes up with just enough money to make you agree to go away forever.

You are not getting your meds because the 'brilliant' assemblymen and state senators you keep re-electing decided on a new system that lets the Insurance Company require a new form -- REQUEST FOR AUTHORIZATION -- for every prescription.

The Request for Authorization must be accompanied by a long report requesting exactly what's in the form -- the doctor has to write TWO requests for one prescription (every time her renews the prescription and yes even if you have had the identical prescription for 20 years on this same claim).

The your state senators and assemblymen said that double report goes to the insurer Reviewing Doctor -- called Utilization Review . The Utilization Review doctor gets one week from the date the doc delivered the Report AND RFA to answer.

If the Utilization Review doc agrees, you get the 'ok' on the prescription a week after you doc gets that RFA and report to the insurer. If your doc is mailing the report and that takes a week, you're waiting two weeks before the adjuster has to authorize any prescription being filled.

TELL YOU ASSEMBLYMAN AND STATE SENATOR THEY INJURED YOU WITH THIS HORRIFIC SCHEME. THEY think we are making up the stories of people dying in withdrawals and suffering in the ER and dying taking street drugs because of their idiotic approval scheme they put into law.

So your 'lifetime medical' now is a lifetime of waiting weeks for the doctor to write the RFA and the report, at least one week for the adjuster's Utilization Review doctor to say yes or no, and then 9 months for any independent medical review --- and IMRs are coming out 80% 'no' , so the injured worker got screwed royally by their elected officials and they just sit home quiet about it.