Opinion: Stop re-traumatizing the San Bernardino shooting survivors who need treatment

To the editor: Employees who have been traumatized by the San Bernardino shooting on Dec. 2, 2015, deserve better assessment and treatment than state and county officials have tried to bureaucratically administer. Both health insurance systems and related California workers’ compensation programs have let these individuals down. (“They survived the San Bernardino terror attack. Now, they feel betrayed,” Nov. 30)

Apparently, a county “is not a doctor,” thus leaving treatment decisions to doctors who are far away and haven’t even seen the patient face-to-face. Further, the review entity that hires these professionals for overseeing medical utilization is likely paid by the county, the party at risk, which calls into question the independence and validity of the entire process.

As this type of trauma can devastate one’s life, care should be rendered in an expedited format, which would prevent victims from feeling re-traumatized, abandoned and betrayed.

Marc D. Skelton, Laguna Niguel

The writer is a clinical psychologist.

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To the editor: As an employer, I agree with all the complaints cited in your piece on the survivors of the San Bernardino shooting.

Workers’ compensation is an inadequate and very imperfect system. After an incident, the first thing workers’ compensation officials do is assign an amount to be paid out. The rates employers pay are raised, and there is no appeal. The employees in the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau speak in jargon that is incomprehensible.

The long-term solution is single-payer healthcare, and the short-term solution is for people who have their own health insurance to avoid saying the incident that injured them occurred at work. Workers’ compensation is an adversarial system.

Karen Heller Mason, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I can relate to the frustrations of the San Bernardino employees, as I too have experienced many of the same withheld treatments and medications all at the hands of a faceless utilization review physician in my own claim.

However, as a registered nurse and healthcare advocate, I would say to the San Bernardino County bureaucrats, stop your foot dragging and provide your injured employees the treatment and care that their physicians have ordered. Doing so, contrary to a county spokesman’s assertions, isn’t wrong, because it’s all about choosing the informed decision of a physician who’s actually treating the injured worker over some distant desk-jockey physician who has never seen the patient.

So step up and provide your employees with the medical care and treatment they so desperately need.

Geneviève Clavreul, Pasadena

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