Hi Jennifer,

I can't tell you what a reasonable settlement is but I can tell you that the IC in my state, Pa. offered my husband who has had RSD for 4 years 150K. They did a life plan or something like that to figure future medical expenses for medicare set asideand estimated he would live to be 81. He is now 50 so that 150K is about 4800 bucks a year. That is crazy. We had our own impairment rating evaluation (IRE) and he is 63% impaired. The IC has yet to do an IRE but they have just filed a petition to modify/suspend benefits.



Good Luck.

Dear jennifer d,
I wanted to email you privately but can't find the stupid button to do so. If you want to do that it would be great. All I can say is it is a joke here in PA and from what I've heard over the years you are lucky if you get about 60K from them. Sometimes before they settle they will want you to do a 4 hour test or something. I am bedridden pretty much with full-body RSD and that was not an option I could do but had to settle. It was a joke for sure. The one thing I would have done differently is to have them give you monthly payments forever instead of a lump sum. Here in PA the social security disability considers that settlement as income and subtracts it for years from your monthly amount. So, there were months I only received $174.00 per month from SSD and had to dig into my savings to just live each month. It has been a mess.

The interesting info I have learned is that there are civilian cases where people ONLY have RSD in one part of their body and have received 15 million (yes, take yourself off the floor) and I want to cry each day cause I got peanuts for sure because it is workers comp. I don't know who made these rules up but they were either paid by workers comp or it was workers comp themselves. So not only are we in pain, lost our jobs, our families, friends, lives in general we now get the shaft for settlements too. All I can say (to rationalize this in my head) is that God has great plans for all of us for all the suffering we do each day. If you have any questions and feel like PMing me feel free to do so. Good luck. Stick to your guns and if they come in low tell them no way and make it higher.
kathy d

My friend has had RSD for almost 4 years (full body now) from a job related injury.

He finally got an attoney to take his case a year ago. and as it goes it is still on going:

The insurance company has been OK - but they are not your friend no matter how well they treat you - you are a long term liabilty on the books.

Never/ever settle your medical benefits.

If you take a lump sum settlement it could have effects on your current SSD benefits.

It has been rumored to his attorney that they are going to offer a settlement and it will be mulit million dollar ( he is currently 62 - 58 at time of accident).
He has no intention of ever settleing this case as the cost of just living expense, transportion, hiring someone to do what you can not is just too hard to determine.

Right now a million dollars may look good - but 5 yrs down the road you may ask why did I do that. The ploy of the insureace company is to be your friend and put a big dollar sign in front of you and say sign on the dotted line.

GET A GOOD ATTONEY on your side. Once settle you can not undo it.
Prayers and wishes for pain free days ahead.

Dear Sailmaker510,
I do agree with you about your posting but I do want to point out something I think I need to clear up. You said "Right now a million dollars may look good - but 5 yrs down the road you may ask why did I do that. The ploy of the insureace company is to be your friend and put a big dollar sign in front of you and say sign on the dotted line." I don't believe the ploy of the ins co is to be your friend. They may think so but they have many different ways to make you change your mind. You say the money may look good now but but 5 years down the line ---...The ins co may be out of business or merged with another co by then and you could be cutoff OR what happens in case the patient dies by some random thing (I know I hate to think this way too) then will his/her suvivors get any money or will it just be cut off since the patient died?

If this is a workers comp settlement social security treats the money received as income and spreads it out over the years. You could wind up not getting a dime of SS money for several years as a result of the settlement. Maybe you could specify what is for transportation, PT, etc. before the settlement this way soc sec doesn't include it all as income. I know there are so many ways of looking at this and your ideas are correct. What has been happening to me is that the workers comp doesn't want to pay for me to get my Ketamine treatment so they are constantly filing court docs to go before a judge to keep me from getting them and it goes on and on for years. This is the way they stop your treatments. They want you to get so annoyed and frustrated you just give up. If you settle monetarily make sure you don't settle your health benefits. This way you can continue to get benefits even if you have to fight for them. Hopefully, Pres Obama will cutout disqualifying us for ins because of preexisting conditions. It will be interesting to see what happens. THanks for your email.
kathy d

That's not exactly correct. With a good life-care planner who researched future medical and an economic expert who runs the numbers and it can be determined fairly accurately.

I'm not familiar with WC claims, but through a car accident causing CRPS I know a friend settled for more than $500,000. That was even without going to court. Insurance didnt fight it.

No fault won that case... Im on comp.. and they have offered me 4 different settlements .I refused them all.. I will not settle.. this beast seems to be here to stay. i will need them to cover treatments for many years to come until one sticks.. and then even if it does stick it might come back.. nope I won't settle ..especially for 14 grand when in the last year they have spent over 400 grand on medical alone.. they know the real worth .. and they are insulting my intelligence . and they will do the same to all that do not know the worth of medical they will need in the future.....

I've always wondered why the heck this is even allowed. Anyone with a serious injury taking a lump sum generally won't receive a fraction of what is really needed to cover their medical care. It seems to encourage fraud... Or shift the monetary burden to tax payers...

Don't get me wrong, WC is generally miserable to deal with, so I can understand wanting to get them out of one's life.

Attorneys also encourage their clients to settle for a lump sum so that they end up getting a % of the medical (unless of course the injured worker is in a state with max attorney fees.)

Every doc I've ever spoken with has said it's foolish to settle out medical with WC, yet most of their patients seem to make that choice. I decided early on that the only thing I could worry about was keeping my medical open, which resulted in me being without out a dime of income for a long stretch at one point--without the help of family I would have ended up homeless...

This was not in a "no fault" state. Please don't jump to conclusions. And yes, I understand the general discussion here is WC.

One thing I advise very strongly before you settle is to make sure you have what is called an "open file" which is what the wc company has to pay for the rest of your life. That is what they would have to cover pertaining to your rsd whether it be docs visits, surgery, meds. etc. That is the biggest thing with me because it does get rather expensive. I have been fighting since 2003, settled out once, then wc renigged on what we settled on so we are now fighting again. If you don't have health ins. you will probably have a very difficult time getting it. I was denied 3 times in 1 summer because of my rsd. So please try to make sure to settle at least with an "open file". It will be one of the best things you will have done. Take care and good luck.

Sincerely,
Tracy