This article responds to the article in the February 17, 2009 edition of Time Magazine written by Dr. Scott Haig regarding workers' compensation patients and returning to work. This article responds to the article in the February 17, 2009 edition of Time Magazine written by Dr. Scott Haig regarding workers' compensation patients and returning to work.
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Response to Time Magazine Article: "Doctor's View: Can Health Coverage Cause Pain?"

I recently read an article in the February 17, 2009, edition of TIME Magazine in the health and science section. This article was entitled "Doctor's View: Can Health Coverage Cause Pain?" and was written by Dr. Scott Haig. You can read the article here.

The gist of the article was that if you are out on workers' compensation due to a work injury, certain medical procedures to get you healed and back to work are less successful on individuals who have the same injury and have the same procedure but are not on workers’ compensation. That second group, the non-worker compensation patients, tends to return to work much faster.

To support his argument, Dr. Haig quotes a rotator cuff study conducted in 1995 involving 103 patients. This study found “that surgery patients on workers’ compensation felt better and returned to work only 42% of the time compared to 94% of those not on workers’ compensation.” The doctor continued by asking the question: “How do we explain the fact that the same surgery “works” less than half the time if you are on paid leave from work, but nearly all the time if you are not?”

First, I just cannot believe that a medical doctor would use such rudimentary “logic” to make his argument. Second, I cannot believe that the editors at TIME Magazine would allow such an argument to be made that has one obvious hole in its logic. So obvious, you can drive a truck through it.

Third, the obvious hole is that, of course, people who are off of work due to a specific injury but not receiving wage benefits will go back to work sooner because they need to pay their bills and feed their kids and pay the mortgage. Nowhere in Dr. Haig’s piece does he discuss the possibility that people who are not on workers’ compensation and receiving wage benefits are returning to work too early and continue to suffer pain and re-aggravation and re-injury or just go through unnecessary pain merely because they have to pay their bills.

People like Dr. Haig do not want to think like that. It is easier for people like Dr. Haig to believe that people on workers’ compensation are merely fakers and are making up their injury and exaggerating their disability. When they see someone going back to work after a rotator cuff surgery fairly quickly, they believe that the surgery is a success when, in fact, the employee merely has to earn a paycheck in order to put food on his table. This reasoning never crosses Dr. Haig's mind.

As a workers’ compensation practitioner, I often see cases where the injured employee is forced to return to work because the workers’ compensation insurance company has not begun paying him/her wage benefits for an obvious work injury. The employee returns to work despite the pain and despite the objections of the treating doctor. This happens all the time. I wonder why Dr. Haig did not quote any studies on the fact that workers’ compensation insurance companies routinely commit insurance fraud by denying benefits without reasonable basis. Why is Dr. Haig not discussing this in TIME Magazine? Furthermore, why is Time Magazine not discussing this epidemic of insurance fraud committed by insurance companies?

©2009 Carroll & Carroll, P.C., All Rights Reserved, Reproduced with Permission
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