I frequently speak with veterans who express concern about their ability to earn both Social Security Benefits and Veterans Disability Benefits. The good news is that you can earn both at the same time. In fact, in some cases, VA disability benefits can help you earn Social Security benefits.
If you’re receiving veterans’ disability, then Social Security is going to strongly take that into consideration. In their eyes, another government agency has already declared your injury legitimate and decided that you are in need of benefits. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really work the other way. If you’re already receiving Social Security benefits, the VA isn’t necessarily going to take that into consideration because there’s no way of knowing if your Social Security benefits are service-related.
There are a few differences between Social Security Benefits and Veterans Disability Benefits. For instance, in order to receive Social Security benefits, you must be completely disabled — whereas with VA disability, you can have a low disability rating (sometimes as low as 10%).
Another big difference is the amount of weight your physician’s word has. With Social Security disability, your designated treating physician’s word is the final say. Your case can rely entirely on what your doctor says. However, with veterans’ disability, the VA considers all factors. Their policy says that your doctor could be biased, so they must look at any and all contributing factors.
When it comes to insurance med pay is a term that gets thrown around a lot, but I’ve found that a lot of people aren’t really sure what med pay exactly. Med pay refers to medical payments coverage, and it’s generally bought alongside car insurance. It’s a very catch-all kind of insurance that covers a wide range of injuries that you could get if you were to be involved in a car accident.
When you purchase med pay, the insurance company agrees to pay reasonable expenses for the necessary medical treatment you receive as the result of your accident. This basically means that they’re going to cover your accident-related injuries as long as you don’t send them an unreasonably high bill. They’ll look at the cost of similar procedures in the area where you received treatment to determine whether or not the cost of your procedures is unusually high.
As with many other kinds of insurance, there is a limit to how late you can make your claim. In the case of med pay, you have three years from the date of your accident to make your claim. Med pay can also cover more than one family member, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re driving, a passenger, or a pedestrian who’s been struck by a vehicle.
If you’re wondering how much med pay insurance costs, the answer varies on how much coverage you want. Some plans can be as cheap as $500 while others could be $1 million if you wanted to spend that money.
We’ve written in the past about hip replacement implant recalls and lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson. Recently one of Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary companies, DuPuy Orthopedics has been involved in a number of cases surrounding defective hip replacement implants.
These medical devices have been recalled due to the fact that they caused a number of complications in patients that received them. Patients reported symptoms such as pain, difficulty standing, limited mobility, loosening of the prosthetic joint, metal poisoning and hip replacement failure. Many of these patients required a second surgery to correct the first one.
It’s not uncommon for there to be complications when it comes to risky surgeries; however, the reason DuPuy is being held responsible is partly due to the fact that they did not conduct sufficient premarket testing. As a result they are currently embroiled in a series of bellweather trials to settle the claims.
The point of a bellweather trial is to address multiple claims over the same issue. The patients who experienced negative side effects from their DuPuy hip replacement implants were able to have their case heard through this bellweather trial. That way one judge could make a decision on a large number of cases, rather than having multiple judges view each case individually. This not only helps with the speed at which these cases are settled, but also with the consistency of the outcomes of these cases.
The third DuPuy Hip Replacement Implant Trial concluded at the end of 2016. As a result, Johnson & Johnson was forced to pay $1 billion in punitive damages on top of $32 million in compensation.
Many people have multiple employers. Sometimes this is because they are working more than one job. At other times, it’s because they are contract employees. It also could be because their job falls under the umbrella of two companies. To answer the question, “Do I have Joint Employers If I’m a Contract Worker,” read on.
Your individual situation determines how your case will be handled. For instance, there was a case in 2013 concerning a woman who worked as a housekeeper for the Crothall Services Group. Through Crothall Services she was contracted out to Novant Health, Inc. in order to provide cleaning services. She was assigned to work at Forsyth Medical Center. As she was leaving to take her lunch break, she fell in the parking lot and injured her left shoulder. The parking lot was owned and managed by Novant.
The woman returned to work, but was later fired for smoking an e-cigarette during an unauthorized break. Not only was the break unauthorized, but Corthall’s policy required that she follow Novant’s no-smoking policy while at the hospital. After she was let go, she filed a workers’ compensation claim against both Crothall and Novant. However, both companies denied her claim.
When she tried to appeal her case, the court ruled in favor of Crothall and Novant because she was only employed by Crothall, not Novant, and since she was injured on Novant’s property, she was not eligible for workman’s comp.
The problem here was that these two companies were not her joint employers. If she’d been doing the same work for both companies, the situation would have been different. An experienced attorney can help you navigate small differences such as this and help you approach a case in a way that gives you the best chance of settling in your favor. So if you’ve been injured at work, don’t hesitate to contact an attorney as soon as possible.
In previous blogs, we’ve mentioned that we often have clients who are unsure about what kinds of cases we take. The truth is we take a wide variety of workman’s comp cases and work with clients from all kinds of industries — from nurses to construction workers to anything else you can think of. Your injury doesn’t even have to have taken place in North Carolina. As long as your company is located here, there’s a good chance we’ll take it on.
For instance, one of our current clients is a truck driver for a company located here in North Carolina. While driving through West Virginia, he got into a single vehicle accident. As a result, he broke his right elbow, tore his right tricep, injured his clavicle, tore his rotator cuff and injured his neck. After the accident, he continued experiencing headaches.
The good news was that workers’ compensation covered his surgery on his elbow and tricep, and paid him weekly checks. However, he still needed surgery on his rotator cuff. Our client is in his late 50s, and unsure whether he’ll be able to return to his job without further surgery. That’s when he reached out to Oxner + Permar. Our client has asked for our help to ensure that he receives his full medical treatment in order to regain full use of his arm and shoulder. Because if he is unable to return to work, what will he do? A lot rests on his case.
We are currently in the process of working with him to ensure that he receives full coverage of his treatments. Should he be unable to return to work, we’ll look at alternative options together to try to figure out his best course of action — because the most important thing to us is making wrongs, right!
