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11 hours agoSAIF’s nonprofit status has no bearing on how they pay out. They still move to close claims as quickly as possible, they still use shill doctors who aren’t good enough to practice as “independent” medical examiners to deny claims and they still sell people’s claims to managed care organizations that are for-profit and make more money by denying care. Getting injured on the job and needing care as a result in Oregon is a bad time.
SAIF exists because Oregon law says it exists, and like many entities that exist entirely because of legislation it does the bare minimum of what the law says it does.
Tell me you’ve never had to deal with SAIF without telling me you’ve never had to deal with SAIF. Nonprofit insurance companies are still insurance companies and they aren’t your friend under any circumstances. The going advice in Oregon is to hire a lawyer as soon as you can when dealing with SAIF because they are set up to filter out anyone who won’t fight as hard as they can for the benefits they’ve paid into.
God help you if you have a mental health claim, SAIF will tear into your life as deeply as they can to find a reason to not pay for a therapist. Those bloodsuckers wanted ALL of my medical records going back to childhood when I wanted to talk to a counselor after I saw my coworker get badly injured on the job and they told me it would take at least 6 months to accept or deny my claim, even though Oregon law says they only have 60 days to do it. Lawyers told me that even though I was right, Oregon workers comp is tilted so far away from the worker that it wasn’t worth their time, since they only get paid if they make SAIF accept a claim they had previously denied.