Local gym holding raffle to help employee injured on the job.

I'm pretty sure the gym is owned by freeper-types and the raffle is designed to help the unfortunate man pay "extensive medical bills." I'm wondering...why didn't the employer offer decent medical coverage to begin with? Are medical benefits becoming too expensive for small employers to offer or am I seeing something that, while a nice gesture, shouldn't have to happen?

http://www.sonorasportsandfitness.com/

Scroll down to "Spotlight On."

I'm wondering if this gesture might be intended to stave off a lawsuit since the man was injured on the job?

Am I becoming too cynical due to my own experiences with the health care system?

most of the bills?

Before you can get worker's comp you have to go to the doctor. Doctors won't see you without cash. My son could barely walk and the back doctor told him to bring at least $350 for his first appointment. Luckily we have a completely separate medical program in my little town that he qualified for, and a visiting neurosurgeon, so he was able to get his initial medical care that way and get his worker's comp going. But it took 3 months and the appt. with his worker's comp doctor is scheduled for Dec 15 so he still hasn't been officially approved or authorized for any real treatment. Things have changed so much in the last 10 years or so, even people who may have been broke 20 years ago don't realize that the safety net is a series of frayed ropes with a thousand people trying to grab on to each one.

on what the status of the claim is--open, closed, on appeal. When a worker is injured on the job, if the claim is accepted and the medical condition reaches "stable" status (not getting better, not getting worse) typically a state's WC laws close the claim by giving the injured worker a disability rating that equals a percentage of their prior income which factors in the relative "disability" (you get certain percentages for different limbs, conditions, etc.--it's complicated).

A total cash value is figured out and this is what the worker gets paid, on a monthly basis--which is often substantially less than what they were making when working.

On top of this, if a person is disabled and not working, then they lose their employer-sponsored health insurance.

and workers' compensation is mandatory. This is very odd.

It might be an effort to "stave off" a lawsuit but the employer's bigger problem is state enforcement. If state enforcement of the mandatory insurance laws finds out about it, it will/can/should put the company out of business. The laws are very strick. (I was a workers' comp lawyer for 10 years.) You'd not think they would advertise they didn't have insurance.

If you're curious enough, you can call the CA workers' comp agency and ask if the company had insurance.

If you read the post carefully it says they are raising money for a member of the gym's "family". My suspicion is that maybe "family" means one of its members, not necessarily employees. In that case the gym is not in trouble...the guys employer is.

if the WC claim rep determines that medical treatment is "pallative" (i.e., not shown to improve the condition) then payments are cut off. The pallative tx exception often applies to psych care, chiro txs and massages, and has also been applied to "perpetual" painkiller prescriptions.

but if it weren't regular medical insurance often does cost small businesses a ton of money. That is why there are so many working, uninsured in the US.

that you know something is wrong with our health care system when we see collection jars in convenience stores (and now a gym) to help the sick and injured pay for their health care.

This shit wouldn't happen if our tax money was actually used wisely & used for single-payer healthcare. People shouldn't have to beg for money to stay alive; we aren't a civilized country, we're a barbaric one. And if "socialized medicine" is so bad, let's end medicare now. </sarcasm>