I often tell my clients that OWCP/DOL is not a retirement system. It is a system which was meant to address the medical injury resulting from a work-place accident or occupational hazard resulting in a medical issue arising, such that compensation is allowed for a period of time during a process of recuperation.
As unfortunate as it is, Worker’s Comp has become synonymous with “harassment” and “difficult”, where approval for wage compensation, for medical treatment (including necessary surgery) has meant months and months — and often years — of wrangling and fighting; of having an OWCP case manager or adjuster being rude, failing to respond, failing to return telephone calls, and just when it seems as if something may be done, the OWCP caseworker is switched to someone else who is equally unresponsive.
Then of course there is the intrusiveness — of the OWCP nurse who sits in with you and your doctor, in a context where it is as if the “enemy” is watching that relationship which is supposed to be sacred and private: a conversation between a doctor and the patient. It is, as I have often told clients, “a hard road to travel.” Yet, where the medical condition, injury or disability arises as a result of a work-place accident, obviously it is financially beneficial because it pays more. That is the bottom line. Further, it is tax-free. But it is not a retirement system.
Disability retirement pays less; it matters not whether the injury or medical condition occurred “on the job”; you are not required to be examined by a “second opinion doctor”; you do not have to obtain prior approval from a case manager to go and seek medical treatment. But the benefits are much lower; it is taxable. However, is it disability retirement. In such a retirement, you are meant to go out and to do other things in life, including other work.
Sincerely,
Robert R. McGill, Esquire
Filed under: Clarifications of Laws or Rules, OPM Disability & OWCP Workers Comp Filings | Tagged: disability retirement at the USPS, federal owcp, Federal Worker's Comp and the OWCP nurse, Federal Worker's Comp approval for wage compensation, Federal Worker's Comp is not a retirement system, federal workers comp, injured postal worker, job-related illness, job-related injury, medical condition(s), occupational hazard federal employees, OPM disability doesn't have to be job-related, OWCP approval for medical treatment, OWCP approval for surgery, OWCP benefits for federal workers, OWCP case manager, OWCP disability, OWCP doctors, OWCP mercenary doctors and nurses, Postal Service disability, the federal agency and occupational medicine, the human side of a disability story, USPS Disability, USPS occupational medicine mercenary doctors, USPS Workers Comp, work-place accident in a federal or Postal job, Worker's Comp for Federal and Postal workers, Worker's Comp second opinion doctor, Workers Comp disability, your treating doctors | 5 Comments »