Insurance companies try all sorts of dumb things with one goal in mind.  They want to frustrate you in to either giving up or using your own health Insurance.  If you are injured at work in Illinois it’s a terrible idea to use your own insurance for two reasons.  1. There will be co-pays and out of pocket expenses which you wouldn’t have if you went through work comp. 2. If your personal health insurance company found out that they improperly paid for benefits that they shouldn’t have, they can/will withhold future payments until they are reimbursed.

So if you get Blue Cross to pay for your work related shoulder injury, they could later refuse to pay for cancer treatments or your appendix or something else.

All that said, the work comp insurance will still try to deter you.  Recently I got a call from guy who badly injured his shoulder when he fell out of his truck.  It’s clearly a case, but he hasn’t been able to get much medical care.  Why?  Because the insurance company has refused to give him a claim number, stating that they don’t do that while they are investigating the case.

There is really nothing to investigate and it’s a phony excuse.  They are really hoping to discourage this truck driver and get him to use a different medical insurance policy. Unfortunately for them, he’s too smart to do that, knows why work comp exists in Illinois and was smart enough to call for help.

All we need to do is file your case and/or pick up the phone.  We’ll typically have a case number and approval for benefits right after that because they know there is no avoiding the case once you officially file with an attorney.  And if that doesn’t work we’d file a trial motion and a petition for penalties due to an unreasonable delay in benefits and that should solve everything.

Big picture is that you are up against people who get paid to try and find a way to either not pay you or minimize what you are owed.  It’s ruthless and often ridiculous, but they are banking on you being a pushover. So their strategy only works if you let them get away with it.