Legal Clinic Launches "Bad Medicine" Report

TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - May 24, 2017) -

IAVGO Community Legal Clinic launches their report "Bad medicine: a report on the WSIB's transformation of its health care spending" with co-author Antony Singleton today in downtown Toronto. The report exposes the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board's misleading claims behind their cuts to health care benefits to sick and disabled workers.

"Our research shows that the WSIB's Health Care Strategy is more about denying entitlements and ignoring injuries rather than providing the actual health care," says Jessica Ponting, Community Legal Worker at IAVGO. "So many of our clients are not able to get the basic treatment their doctors recommend and their disabilities are getting worse as a result."

Highlights of the report include:

• The WSIB's $34 million reduction in drug spending is primarily the result of the WSIB reducing the number of claims for which it grants drug benefits
• The WSIB integrates an array of troubling cost control measures into its health care provision, including fee structures that create disincentives to treat workers with injuries that take longer to recover
• The "striking decline" of compensation for workers with life-time injuries is not evidence of improved recovery outcomes but rather evidence of the WSIB's austerity agenda

The WSIB claims that workers are recovering from their injuries at a higher rate because of the changes it made to its health care benefits. "Bad Medicine" debunks this claim using the WSIB's own information and data.

"Bad Medicine" is being launched the same day as the Ontario Network of Injured Workers Groups undertakes its third annual cycle-a-thon from Ottawa to Toronto to promote the rights of injured workers, people with disabilities, women's rights, immigrants' rights, indigenous rights, right to shelter, right to clean air and water, and other issues that concern all workers.

The following people are available for interviews:

Antony Singleton, Lawyer and Co-Author of "Bad Medicine"
Maryth Yachnin, Staff Lawyer at IAVGO Community Legal Clinic
Sang-Hun Mun, Organizer with Injured Workers Action for Justice