Football and Work Comp Politics

Bowzer knows...

In October, after the California Division of Workers' Compensation eliminated neuropsychology as a QME option, I said that Los Angeles would finally get it's football team.

Specifically I challenged commentary in the WorkCompCentral story about the neuropsychology QME elimination that it was about abuse by applicant attorneys. I said:

"That may be. But it is too simplistic. If applicant attorneys were routinely abusing loopholes and circumventing the psyche prohibitions by selecting neuropsychology for QME work (which the defense could oppose, by the way), then this would have surfaced as a problem long ago.

"Nope - politics is much more sinister than something with that easy an explanation. There's another reason, something that is much deeper, much more politically connected, involving much more money and power.

"Maybe I'm "out there." Perhaps my cynicism is way too obtuse, or my imagination too far afield from reality...

"There are three football teams in California. The NFL wants a fourth to satisfy the demand. Traumatic brain injury leading to dementia and Alzheimers has been scientifically and medically correlated and those diseases are very, very expensive over the lifetime of the sufferer...

"Los Angeles will finally get its team..."

My cynicism was based on the fact that an administrative agency, which has only the jobs of executing and enforcing legislative action, not only made new law (I don't buy that neuropsychiatry was accidentally left as an option for 20 years...) but was in fact politically active in opposing any attempt to recognize neuropsychiatry as a legitimate QME option - the timing was simply not just coincidental nor serendipitous; it was odiferously suspicious.

I told anyone that would listen that announcements would be made within 6 months of DWC's final action.

I was wrong. It took 5 months.

Maybe I wasn't obtuse, cynical or imaginative enough.

There's really not much more to say, except that attempts by psychology groups to reinstate neuropsychology QME as an available category for resolution of disputes will fail - at least until after the stadium is built and at least one team is seated there.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, "workers' compensation is a political construct that obfuscates medical science in order to achieve a financial goal."

The proof is in the NFL and the California DWC.