SAMPLE LETTER TO REPRESENTATIVE

From: Your name
Your address

To: The Honorable (your congressman or senator's name)
Address

Dear Senator/Congressman:

As both a constituent and taxpayer I am requesting you to introduce or support the introduction and passage of legislation changing the Federal Employee's Compensation Act. I keep hearing that something needs to be done reduce cuts in government and to insure that programs are serving the purpose they were created for. No program is more badly in need of reform and restructuring than the Federal Employee's Compensation Act. Currently the administrators serve themselves before the injured workers they are paid to serve The fraud rate by claimants is less than one percent, but the fraud rate by administrator contractors exceeds 40%. The costs are not truly exposed to the Congress, as fraudulent contractors services are not made a separate reporting account, instead they me buried in the cost of the claimants medical treatment. As such, of the over 400 million dollars a year spent on medical treatment, It is estimated that over 50% is due to fraudulent services by contractors. There is no fee schedule for the contractor services while there is a low fee schedule for treatment by physicians servicing the injured.

The other areas of cost fraud and misrepresentation are in vocational rehabilitation and the nurse intervention program. The vocational rehabilitation successfully places and trains less than 10% of those who, if received real services, would be gainfully employed and off the roles. Instead the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs directs injured workers into either constructed positions (ones which the claimant does not have and could not get) or menial jobs that are not available and the injured workers cannot find. The nurse intervention program pays nurses an exaggerated $65 per hour not to do nursing work. At present a top scrub nurse in a surgical environment with high skills only gets paid $20-25 per hour. The OWCP also selects these nurses and the services that they can provide. The OWCP states that these nurses are not to provide medical consultations, services, or make medical decisions, so one must ask what do they do for the $65 per hour (three times the highest pay for nurses in the country).

It is long past due for this program to be reformed and substantive changes made. The employers would have you believe they should not pay for compensation at all and certainly not in a long term environment. You need only remember that workers compensation exists to protect the employers from their liability in not providing safe work environments and are a contract that if injured workers are not compensated in the courts then they should be compensated for their losses. Unfortunately that is not true and the current system is broken. It does not matter that they are the most generous benefits of any workers compensation program in America, if you cannot get them or get them in time to stop from suffering loss.

I respectfully request that you or your staff contact the National Association of Federal Injured Workers (NAFIW) at 541-472-8944 or 2701 Coed Place Grants Pass, OR 97527, or by FAX at 541-472-9109 for information on how you can serve us and the taxpayers of America in large.

Respectfully,

Signed(your name)

If you do not know the address of your representatives contact your local newspaper, NAFIW or on the internet at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

You need to write this letter on your own machine or by hand and send it. We are coming to a critical junction in our ability to influence change and you need to do your part. It will take you less than ten minutes to do this, isn't it worth the time?