Pennsylvania's Supreme Court ruled 5-2 in July to close a loophole that let some pharmacies charge injured workers dramatically inflated prescription prices.
The 700 Pharmacy decision addressed a referral pattern that had inflated prescription costs across the state's workers' comp system for years. The court's holding: the anti-referral protections that exist in the rest of healthcare apply here too. Injured workers pay ordinary pharmacy prices, not carve-out prices.
Rulings like this matter less for the single case and more for the pattern they close. Every state has structural quirks that quietly cost injured workers money. Pharmacy referrals in one state, ambulance carve-outs in another, imaging pricing in a third. Advocacy work is often about noticing which quirk is active in a given jurisdiction and pushing back on it inside the individual claim.
Atlas's employee advocate work starts from the injured worker's side of the ledger. If the pharmacy invoice looks off, the network referral looks off, or the bill code looks off, someone reviews it before it becomes their problem.
What structural quirks in your jurisdiction quietly cost injured workers money that no single claim would ever escalate?
Source: WBOC, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Backs Injured Workers on Prescription Costs
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