My wife2B is employed by a company called, "Dollar General".
Just a sales associate, bottom-of-the-food-chain-type gig. Her insurance is also through them.

She tore her knee at work and after almost a year of mind-boggling, honorless himming and hawing, Workmen's Comp finally approved her surgery and back pay. Meanwhile, after a year, her knee condition has advanced to the point of her never living pain-free again.

Now on top of that, it's been determined that last week, she had a mild heart attack. Went to her doctor, called in prescriptions when she got home only to discover that unbeknownst to her, Dollar General had CANCELLED her insurance in January with no reason and with no notification!

The subhuman at corporate stated that, "Paper work was sent in January", which is a total lie (if I listed their track record of dishonesty and underhandedness through the course of this, another lie would be absolutely no shock at all.)

So now, with no insurance (COBRA? If we could afford COBRA, we could afford to BUY Dollar General) and a heart condition, under the bus we go.

Folks, if you ever want to find out how much your health is worth in the real world, go to work for Dollar General and get hurt on the job.

Caning should be legal.

As much as I generally despise the species, this might be the time to talk to one of those personal injury lawyers.

If those kind of problems are wide spread, maybe there is a group planning a class action lawsuit against DG. It might be worthwhile googling around for some people with similar experiences.

In the meantime why don't you contact your State commissioner of insurance and see if you can file a complaint with his office.

http://www.naic.org/state_web_map.htm

Please forget the personal injury lawyers. Your sweetheart needs a good employment lawyer. They have a national association, and a phone call to them will get you a list of qualified employment lawyers in your area. Their website is: National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) and contains the other contact information you need.

Good luck.



Bullseye

My ex wife worked for them for while. Like most companies, they worked her like a slave, had expensive insurance, and didn't seem to believe in paying more than minimum wage. She didn't last long; too many other substandard wage jobs out there where you can work a hell of a lot less hard.

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MARK

Who shops a Dollar General? I see them all over the place and I've never stepped foot in one.

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- Change it back -

I do. Cheap Tide and diet cokes and paper goods-cheaper than the Wally. Plus I get to see a lot of clients
Google "Dollar General employee class actions" and see what you find. Dig and find out the names of the lawyers that represented the plaintiffs-call and ask about this. Who knows you could very well be the next named plaintiff in a national suit....or not. What do you have to loose??

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Forum consigliere

Check your state law on employers cancelling health insurance. Depending on the complexity, you may need a lawyer to unravel it. Does your wife still has her employment contract and work conditions on paper? If the company has broken state law, try the state AG.

I once worked for a company that was in the process of filing Chapter 11. They cancelled the insurance of people who worked for specific plants that were being phased out. I had a nurse on the phone that she needed to COBRA an employee right this minute. It was horrendous - people were standing in emergency rooms, holding a useless card.

I still don't know of any recourse. There are places you can get prescriptions cheaper, such as WalMart.

Unfortunately, most big companies and some small businesses don't care much about their employees, and do only what the law demands. They pretty much look upon them as disposable. The bottom line is the only thing that is important to companies nowadays. Ethics and morals don't figure into the big picture.

My wife was a church secretary. She was employed for many years. She was given an ultimatum one day of accepting fewer benefits (she didn't have health or life insurance) or being let go. She couldn't believe that they would treat her like that after many years of loyal service. My point is that even some folks who consider themselves good Christians really don't care about their employees, when it comes down to it.

I hope that your wife recovers completely and proves the doctor's prognosis wrong. I also hope that you find some way to get her medical insurance re-established.

I agree. I have seen it and experienced it first hand.
You have to remember this that some jobs are just that...jobs. They are not careers; they aren't designed to be nor set up to be. Examples such as a Dollar General, any fast food place (McDonalds), private contract security guards, parking valets, etc.

Every company I have dealt with has, despite what they MAY say or MAY put in writing, acts this way. It is all about the $ and you, as an employee, just don't matter as there are a hundred more ready to take your place.

There might be exceptions out there somewhere, but I haven't seen them.

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The Last Standing Knight

Just curious, but when did it become the responsibility of companies to be the welfare keeper of society. Seems it used to be that you worked doing a certain duty and got paid. If the company wanted to be competitive and get the best employees they offered variuos extra benefits to make them attractive. Companies, large and small, are in business to make money, not be the nanny of it's employees. Somehow, our society has gotten off track.

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- Change it back -

I agree

Furthermore, this thread continues the confusion between "health insurance" and "health care". One does not require health insurance to get health care. Health insurance isn't really insurance, it has become privately administered socialized health care. Apparently no one feels they are responsible for paying their own bills.

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Common sense isn't so common.

I may be confused but it seems that the original point was that she was injured "on the job". That should throw a different light on this than just lousy health care policies. DG has legal responsibility if she was injured on the job, whether or not she had her policy through them.

...and to think that many employers wonder why their employees want a union.

Coming from the UK I was staggered to find a whole slew of accepted union practices in the US that were stamped out in Britain under Margaret Thatcher. The closed shop was the number one example. After living here a little while, I realised that the majority of US employers get the Unions and employee cooperation that they deserve. If you are prepared to continually sacrifice your staff at the twin altars of Growth and The Mighty Dollar, don't be surprised when the victims get antsy.

How did we get to the point where we depend on our employer to provide our health care? Seems like the care and well being of our own bodies would be our own responsibility. Maybe to get out from under the current system, we should get a little raise in pay, and pay for it ourselves. What say you? Not to offend anyone, just a question out of the blue.

In fairness to McDonalds, they actually do provide the possibility of growing into a management position, owning stock, even having your own frachise.

I shop at Dollar General sometimes, they still sell toy guns and interestingly violent Chinese made military themed toys slathered with tasty lead based paints.

In general it would be nice if companies followed their legal responsibilities. In this case looking into Social Security disability might be warranted too. But min. wage jobs are just that, and in the labor economy are meant to attract and retain only those people with min. skills. Even at Walmart, which often gets bad press, you can still literally work your way up from cart boy to store manager if you apply yourself.

I agree. It is the only way the health care system can work. Having a third party payer, whether it's an insurance company or the government, divorces the person receiving the care from the cost of the care. That can't work--anything that's free, there's an infinite demand for it.

Perhaps you should suggest that to the three or four folk on this forum who recently have lost, or appear about to lose loved ones to serious illness. Applying the above theory, when a member of your family contracts an illness or suffers a serious injury requiring treatment you either go into life changing/destroying debt or kiss them goodbye. Interesting choice. Better still, say it again to my wife and I regarding her cancer treatment.

To quote/paraphrase somebody famous, Wittgenstein, I think:

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we should be silent.

I'm no fan of people abusing the healthcare system with unncessary doctors/emergency room visits, however,I agree with LVSteve. Who amongst us can afford kidney dialysis out of our own pocket? How about open heart surgery?
Please don't tell me people should die if they can't afford to pay for a catastrophic event, where would any of us be?

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Sure you did

Of course we can't afford it out-of-pocket. But with nationalized health care, we'll die waiting.

There's got to be a solution.

Sorry Barb, I should have stated I'm NOT for Obamacare at all. I vote to change it back.

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Sure you did

That was not the jist of my comment.
My comment was in regard to treatment of GOOD employees who were hard workers and did the job required, sometimes going the extra mile.
I have worked around big companies whose managers and supervisors openly and proudly bragged about screwing over not only their employees, but their customers as well, all with the blessing and at least unofficial encouragement to do so from coroprate headquarters. It isn't always about making money, but about egos. It is called "good business" these days.

When an employer tells you to the effect that you should leave your ethics at home when you come to work and do whatever it takes, legal or illegal, eithical or not, if you want to be successful in business. I have been given that speech several times by several different people over the years. I didn't stay with those employers very long after that; there are lines I will not cross.

There is a way to do things and a way not to do things, even making money. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of you and everyone wins in the long run.

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The Last Standing Knight

Idea that may jolt the co. You go to a investigative reporter w/a local tv station -if one exists- and tell him/her the situation. They go to the co. w/the situation and try to resolve. No guarantees but good for you if co.
capitulates, good for TV ratings, etc......just an idea. gr

I don't understand this as workers comp is a state program that has nothing to do with Dollar General. How are they related?

Cancelling the health insurance is a whole different issue and you would think there is some recourse for you. What that would be I can't say as I do not know Ohio law but there's got to be something.

Best to you and your wife...you'll get through it.

Bob

In my world, companies have a moral and legal obligation to see that employees who are injured on the job and doing no wrong, are provided for. I'll give you an example. My father worked for Colgate-Palmolive for 30 years. He was the victim of a chemical burn while doing his job. It affected his eyes and large areas of his skin (back and legs). According to him, Colgate-Palmolive made sure that he got top notch care from the company level through rehab. He says that company officials kept in touch with him to make sure that he was getting everything he needed. He returned to work, scarred but rehabilitated. He gave the company many more productive years and retired. The possibility of suing the company never crossed my father's mind.

In my world, not only was Colgate-Palmolive being ethical and moral, it was employing "good business" practices. The other employees watch intently when something like this happens, which can affect morale, which in turn affects production, etc. Union oversight was a big factor, I'm sure.

I don't think that all good business decisions should be totally concerned with what is seen on tally sheets. There are intangibles. Otherwise accountants could be running the show and not managers.

I only addressed the health care situation from an economic point of view, leaving the pluckedheart strings out of it. Of course you can find situations in which people need something they can't afford. That does mean that we have, as a country, the financial ability to make any and all health care procedures available to everybody and still maintain the level of advances in medicine that we have enjoyed under the present system.

I can't afford the health care procedures that a billionaire can and neither can you. Does that mean we have to pool all our funds such that every person in this country can have what the billionaire can have? Hate to burst anyone's bubble, but that simply isn't economically possible.

The only alternative, in order to create "equal" health care for all, is to deny people like Bill Gates what he could pay for out of his own pocket. That situation means that literally no new advances in health care will occur, because they ALL start out as extremely expensive procedures.

Again: From an economic standpoint, separating the receiver of a good/service from paying for that good/service is economically unsustainable, regardless of what economic system you try it in. You will not find ANY economics textbook which states otherwise.

Hey, I just want my free Viagra, and I don't how much it costs you.

Thank you, bk43.

A bit of background for ya:

The issue is not with Workmens' Comp, although that process is a labyrinth in and of itself.

Dollar General is a, "self-insuring" company.
What that means is that they're going to do whatever they have to, legal, ethical, fair and honest, OR NOT, to keep their money, or at least sandbag until their money has garnered the maximum interest that it can before the courts force them to cough it up. Meanwhile, the patients' conditions worsen and in my fiance's case, endure extreme pain (ever had a severe knee injury?) due to no possibility of pain management due to the unaffordability of pain medication without insurance.

Along with their conduct motivated by the above, the other lies and constant roadblocks that they've perpetrated through the course of this matter can seemingly only be motivated by malice and/or apathy in the sense that there'd be no other benefit to them in doing so.

When I did a bit of googling, I found where Dollar General was ordered to pay $2.28 million to one of their employees who'd caught her hand in a register and subsequently, the hand had to be amputated. 3 days later, DOLLAR GENERAL FIRED HER, effectively cutting off the benefits that she'd been paying for with deductions from her paycheck. Par for the course.

+1,000.Proud retired Union member[Laborers #326 Vallejo,Ca.]Hope your wife does well.Get a good lawyer who deals with workers rights.

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WALSTIB

Lemme tell ya -- after reporting your at-work injury to your employer, the very next thing to do is GET A WORKERS' COMP LAWYER!! Then, and only then, do you go to a doctor.

I am not exagerrating, here. I have played all sides of this game, and you can absolutely count on A) the insurance company trying to deny every cent of the claim, and B) the employer trying to dump you, either by firing if they can get away with it, or by making things so unpleasant that you quit.

I will readily acknowledge that there are an astounding number of fraudulent WC claims every year, and this accounts for the fact is that the system is heavily rigged against the employee. As repugnant as many people find lawyers, a good WC attorney is not only your BEST friend when you are hurt on the job; he is your ONLY friend.

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Pisgah

To the OP, yes, if she was injured on the job, it is a worker's compensation issue. The fact that DG is self-insured has absolutely no bearing on the case, even the fact that your wife had or didn't have insurance is irrelevant.

If INJURED ON THE JOB, and you can prove this, it is purely worker's comp.

The cancellation of her insurance is another, very serious, but totally separate issue.

I go there for my yard work jeans, cleaning supplies and Barbarsol Aftershaves.

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Protected by Sigma 40VE

Ok, so far I've heard the employer and the gov't are not responsible to provide anyone with health insurance or care, or maybe I'm misinterpretting posts. Some even want folks to pay for their own medical costs(what if your 5 year old needed a $200,00 surgery?), yes, no or maybe?
correct so far?
Well then, let's hear the solutions.

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Sure you did

Think of Dollar General (and Family Dollar) as the modern equivalent of a TG&Y, Ben Franklin, McCrory, et al. A "five-and-dime" as they used to be called.
Same format, same products, different prices, different time.

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The Last Standing Knight

Absent insurance coverage my solution would be to write a check. Other solutions might include family, church and charitable organizations. The only church I am personally familiar with is the LDS church. They are an amazing organization when it comes to helping their members in need. Children's Hospital (facilities across the country) have a variety of ways to assist families in financing necessary medical care for children. For families having to travel away form home to get their children medical attention there are organizations like the Ronald McDonald House providing food, lodging and other services for the family through recovery period.

There are a great many private sector solutions for those who chose to make an effort to reach out.

I would have died.... period.. in 2000, my wife's can opener would not have done the job on my chest.. nor the doctor leaning over yelling CLEAR??? !!

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SWCA #2306
DAV in honor of POP

How about everybody buying insurance for themselves. Major med with high deductable isn't too expensive. Then put away the deductable into savings and you are pretty well covered. Depending on someone else to do it, is s good way to get in a real bind. Waiting until you're sick and then calling for help isn't real good either.

Fine, I'm all with people buying their own healthcare insurance EXCEPT there's millions who can't afford to buy it, including working people.
My BIL pays $20,000 per year for health insurance, how many can afford that coverage?
I'm fortunate enough to have worked for an employer who provided/provides me with healthcare insurance, not for free, but in lieu of wages. I do one thing that most people don't, I scrutinize every claim to my insurance company to make sure they're not getting ripped off. Most insured could care less and toss the EOB's in the garbage. THAT's a huge problem. My wife got sick in Vegas about 10 years ago and we needed to go to the emergency room. Thank God turned out to be nothing requiring hospitalization. A couple months later we get the EOB from the insurance company with dubious charges on them. Seems in the 1/2 hour we were in the ER, according to the EOB, we were visited by 5 doctors. Needless to say, even though the whole bill was being paid for at no immediate cost to me, we notified the company not to pay the charges. They didn't.

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Sure you did

That is exactly the disconnect between the receiver of benefits and the payer which makes possible the other:That is why anytime you put a third party in the mix, which separates the buyer and seller, the motivation for the buyer to obtain the best value for the money spent goes out out the window.

to the OP. this is a work comp case. serious ramification ( at least in PRK) for not handling work comp proeprtly. i worked many bottom rung and part time jobs when i was a teen and in college with no benefits. but i tell you all those employers whiend and moaned about paying work comp premium. god forbid something happens to an employee OTJ.
even in my doctors office, big signs that say if your injury occured on the job let us know. i presume a whole other set of forms
get a work comp lawyer ASAP

after having kaiser for teh 1st 30 eyars of my life where you pay your co-pay and never get an EOB, i now have blue shield where i have to call and find a doctor every time i have a sniffle ( at my wifes insistence we went to PPO) anyway, she is the queen of fighting these charges. we have had 2 babies in the last 2.5 years and each one comes with a 50,000 bill. and itemized charges. of course actual out of pocket is a fraction of that but to see what the inflated price is, is amazing. of cours eteh ins. co. probly also pay some fraction of that. im sure an uninsured cash payer would pay less as well.

That is true. Our first child was born when we had no insurance, so we had to pay everything out of our own pocket. The next two came when we had employer-provided Cigna Insurance and our co-pay for each one FAR exceeded the total cost of kid #1.

Why is it everyone assumes that the only health insurance that is available is the expensive socialist nanny type that pays for everything? That simply isn't true.

My brother is self-employed and pays for his own individual insurance plan. He calls it a 'catastrophic' type plan - he has something like a $10,000 deductible. The plan pays nothing unless something really big and serious happens, otherwise he pays everything himself. It costs him less than $100 per month.

This truly is insurance - it covers him against something major. He pays routine doctor visits himself. Do you expect your car insurance to cover repairs and oil changes?

My employer offers health insurance, it costs about $8000 per year. If I was buying my own insurance on the open market, I would NEVER buy that plan - I don't have anywhere close to $8000 in health expenses. I would buy a plan like my brother has. The $7000 or so I would save would more than pay for my health expenses.

As much as I despise McCain, the one good idea he did have was to take away the tax benefit to companies for providing health insurance, and give it to individuals for buying their own plans. Companies need to get out of the business of providing health insurance to their employees, and individuals need to take more responsibility for paying their own bills.

Insurance should be exactly that: insurance. Not a socialist scheme where you push all your costs off onto everyone else in your pool.

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Common sense isn't so common.

John Galt (appropriate name, btw) has it right. I wish we could do that, but first we have to repeal this monstrosity passed by Congress before it's too late.

Never happen. Once you give the unwashed masses something for free the political will to take it away vanishes. Seen any Medicare or Social Security taken away lately? It's a done deal.

The finest health care in the world will be only a memory ten years from now.

Bob

I hope and pray you're wrong, but I'm afraid you're probably right.

But.....it will get taken away, eventually. Economics pays no heed to written law. You cannot enact prosperity. You cannot legislate away the inviolable laws of economics.

Europe has been able to live the welfare state dream for much longer than it should have because we have been bearing their defense burden.

Now that we've adopted their system, we cannot possibly provide for our own defense and theirs, too. There isn't enough money to borrow to do that.

It will all come crashing down. The only question is when.

From the point of view of medical expertise, your statement stands, but as a complete system?? I would tell my wife who was in medical administration before she got sick but she would hurt something laughing.

The bottom line is that there is so much money involved in medicine today that it brings out the worst in everybody, either to commit fraud or build unnecessary empires.

Q: Ever wondered how you ended up with managed care systems?

A: Because greedy doctors were milking the straight insurance companies every time their trophy wives demanded a new Mercedes.

Q: Ever wondered why there are so many folk in medical admin?

A: Because the more money involved in medicine, the percentage of folk in the "industry" (HAH!) that are actually allowed to authorise its disbursement goes down and the less those folk actually know about medicine. This generates a vast tail of medical case managers who have the knowledge, but no authority. Thinks: shouldn't those qualified in medicine by in hospitals and surgeries?

Q: Ever wonder how the UK and Canada ended up with such huge health service bureaucracies?

A: It's the public's money and their arcane public accounting rules mean that, just like private insurance and managed care, accountants make the decisions. Think the US is any different?

Over the last 20-30 years the issue has never been the real cost of healthcare, but the cost of administering it. The only difference between the US and Canada/UK is that in Canada and the UK the tail is employed by the government. Both tails wag the dog with equally poor results.

There is one particular talk radio dude who always decries the latest legislation on the grounds that folk in the private insurance companies will lose their jobs. Regrettable, maybe, but the simple fact is that every person not involved in patient care or the immediate upkeep of medical facilities is OVERHEAD. My wife fully acknowledges this as only an insider can. She has told me numerous times that healthcare admin needs to be grossly simplified, even though it would probably cost her a job. Do you think that kind of fix ever happen in either a public or private system? If you answered "yes", your parents kept you in the bunker too long.

When they finally run out of ways to get more taxes out of you.

Bet on it and it won't be pretty. There are several issues that needed to be addressed(none of which you mentioned BTW) to "fix" healthcare in this country. Sadly, Obamacare addresses none of them while at the same time making some existing problems worse. It simply is not a sustainable model and it's going down.

In passing,here's a good look at the future. I had a long talk about this with the CEO of our local hospital a couple weeks ago. We were working together repairing the fence between our properties. We figure an intact fence is better than my akita killing his boxers when they get into her yard. Anyway, he and his BOD took a look at their operation under Obamacare and concluded they couldn't keep the doors open. They signed a lease, plus option to buy, with a large regional system July 1st.

How ya' likin' the change so far?

Bob