Workers' Compensation: The other side of the story

There are stories that don't tell the whole story and we knew that Friday's piece entitled "Worker's Comp: Fine line between injury & opportunism" would be one of them.

Privacy laws and client-attorney privilege prevented the county from releasing specifics about many of the medical claims and settlements that were reached between Perry County's insurer and its employees over a 10-year period.

One of the claimants, Randy Waller, was quick to provide both the details and the final outcome from his three and a half-year ordeal with a neck injury while working for the Perry County Highway Department.

An eight-year employee of the department, he was injured operating a bulldozer. Over a four-year period between 2008 and 2012, there were three workmen's compensation payouts of $41,693.76, $48,895.94 and finally $274,687.75.

"I didn't get that money," said Waller. "There were nearly $300,000 in medical bills including $16,000 or $17,000 for therapy over nine months. Workmen's compensation didn't want to pay for the surgery on my neck but Dr. Fonn in Cape Girardeau said if I didn't have it I would be in a wheelchair. He did the surgery anyway," said Waller. Four disks in his neck had to be fused. "Under Obama, you only have an income for 15 months, but I was off for over three and a half years," he said. "I sat for two years and when I tried to go back to work the county said they didn't have a job I could do for the same pay and I had to retire."

"I got $89,000 when it was all settled," he said. "I can't lift over 20 pounds and I worry about airbags going off in case of a car accident."

"What I got didn't even begin to cover the wages I would have gotten if I could have worked," he said.

All told, it was a life-changing injury and a waiting nightmare that affected his life and career. Today, Waller is retired and living in Ocala, Fla. with the memory of the injury, the surgery that almost didn't happen and the thought of being in a wheelchair still fresh in his find. There may be some opportunism for workers in the system, but in a 15 minute telephone call on Monday morning it's obvious that there is more to many of these stories than meets the eye.