Workers Comp Doctor Sues The MTA
The MTA has & will always be called many different things whether it be incompetent, thieves, etc… However you can add a new word to the list, deadbeat. This is according to Dr. Michael Hearns who says the MTA has stiffed him out of more than $600,000 in claims he has billed since January 2007. When you add on interest, the amount totals $1M+ dollars. Alex Ginsberg of the New York Post has more in this report:
If you treat the stiff joints and muscles of NYC Transit workers, watch out. You might wind up getting stiffed yourself.
A workers’-compensation doctor has sued the MTA, claiming the agency is a deadbeat that is refusing to pay out more than $600,000 in claims he has billed since January 2007.
Combined with interest and penalties, that’s more than $1 million the agency is on the hook for, according to the suit, filed last week in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
“I cannot imagine the current president of MTA would condone noncompliant behavior and blatant disregard for applicable laws by its division responsible for reimbursement of workers’-compensation medical bills,” Dr. Michael Hearns wrote in a July 29 letter to MTA President Howard Roberts.
“It is equally disturbing to imagine that a sitting president would knowingly allow MTA to waste taxpayers’ money on unnecessary penalties and interest payments, disrupt the patient-doctor relationship and deny injured MTA workers their rights to medical care.”
The suit demands $10 million in damages.
Click here for the complete report.
Stories like this can start to explain so much as to why our health care system needs to be reformed. However this is not the place for that discussion. I am curious as to what is taking the agency so long to pay out this money if some of the claims go back to January 2007. While I understand their point about wanting to verify the legitimacy of the claims, it should not take that long. I hope to inquire about this with them & see what answers they will provide. So stay tuned….
xoxo Transit Blogger
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Comments
I also have a problem getting reimbursed from the NYCTA for a patient. Outstanding bills are over a year old and I am getting no satisfaction trying to reach someone who can do anything. Can you refer me to someone?
I am so glad to read this story, especially from a Doctor. I’ve been fighting MTA in L.A. since 1991 & have yet to receive my due benefits nor have my doctors been paid! But I bet you MTA’s Lawyers have been!!! It’s so funny that I was granted my medical retirement from MTA and my Social Security Disabilty but not my W/C! I’m sure when it first started out my benefits were much lower but over the years it has skyrocketed. MTA has spent well over a million dollars just fighting me for benefits due that are undisputable. I lost my house, automobiles, credit & a lot of other stuff but I didn’t sell out. I know soon someone will hear us & say these kinds of things need to be checked. Workers Comp is the Maddoff of the insurance companies. Let’s file a big class action lawsuit against them!!!!
As a NYC bus operator who in 2010 was hit with a brick in the face lost teeth had back surgery and knee surgery all do to the assault there docs and social security docs say I could never work agin but as they mta still fuck with me I ave three comp law firms who just don’t no how to deal with transit bull shit I’ve fired all of them now am with Joel fergerson a former mta employee and now a comp lawyer hope he’s the one
This is a problem that can be easily fixed. It isn’t that Transit does not want to pay, it is that they have lazy assed people in charge of getting claims paid. It is as simple as that.