In May 2021, ICBC (BC’s government-run car insurance crown corporation) made a major change to how they deal with injuries and vehicular damage resulting from car accidents. As a result of my April 2024 crash, I’ve experienced the full gamut of services provided by ICBC under their no-fault insurance scheme, which removes the ability to sue for vehicular and injury damages and replaces it with scale-rated compensation for everything.
Note: I have revised my opinion of ICBC and their enhanced care model to reflect recent happenings with regard, in particular, to my income replacement benefit.
Based on multiple examples now, ICBC has a habit of not apologizing for mistakes they make, or for ignoring inquiries about claims. In my mind, this is inexcusable, and I’d now rate my experience to be in line with what I’ve read of other experiences. Not good. I’ll explain closer to the end of this post.
Between delays, some utterly inexplicable things and purely random shit, they do themselves no favours at all.
For the most part, Enhanced Care is ICBC’s euphemism for paying for therapy, income replacement insurance to 90% of net income to $113k and in some cases (like mine), lump sum permanent impairment payments. They’ll also pay various expenses for things that help you recover – I got some weights for home use (to avoid the viral stew at the gym) and glasses with transitions lenses (for my light sensitivity) approved. My experience with enhanced care has ranged from “OK” to poor to worse. As I have finished all therapies except my cognitive therapy, I have some thoughts I’d like to share. I suspect that experiences with it range pretty drastically, so take mine for what it is – one person’s individual experience.
Family Meeting Lies
At some point not long before my GF Strong discharge date, a family meeting occurred, and it included all therapists I saw while in rehab, my wife and sons, my attending physician and ICBC. Attending on their behalf was a support and recovery specialist and his manager. The ICBC line is that they want to ensure your support in the transition back home, all the way through your eventual return to work. In this specialist’s case it seemed more like they wanted to ensure maximum mis/disinformation.
Of course, for all attendees’ benefit we were assured by him and his manager that ICBC’s financial support of necessary therapies would only begin when I was discharged (a point the attending physician made his manager repeat for all to hear). This is important because ICBC only pre-approves 12 weeks of therapy. Later, by email, he then insisted that he and his manager had misspoke, and the 12 weeks began from the date of the accident. This would have rendered their financial support nearly useless, as I ended up in hospital for eight weeks. Had I been limited to a mere four weeks of therapy, my progress would have been nearly nonexistent, as it would have ended on roughly August 14th. I suspect further therapies might have been approved, but we were also completely new to all of this.
As an aside, one thing I’ve found very odd in dealing with ICBC (and Manulife for that matter) is their over-reliance on family doctors. In fact, our original specialist wanted all assessments and treatment plans to come from our GP, as opposed to the therapists who actually do the assessments and provide the therapies. In many cases a GP won’t know anything about your therapies, and will have to reach out to the therapists for updates regardless. In short it just creates another barrier to things happening quickly. More important still, a GP has no acquired brain injury or vestibular rehabilitation expertise.
Turns out, the specialist was spouting complete BS. My claim was handed off to a senior support and recovery specialist, who has approveed all recommended therapies, and also seems to actually defer to the expertise of, well, the experts. The OT we hired (who’s excellent, BTW) thought he was inexperienced because ICBC usually approves therapy as needed for much longer than 12 weeks. While this has thankfully been the case, even just allowing someone to state incorrect information like this is very damaging and introduces completely unnecessary stress for people already frazzled and in a very vulnerable place. In my case, I’ve had hand, vestibular physio and speech/language (actually, cognitive) therapy approved for various lengths of time, well beyond the pre-approved 12 weeks.
ICBC Bike Damage Claim
After opening a claim within a couple days of my crash, my wife was simply ignored by the assigned adjuster (damage claims are handled by a completely different area). She periodically added information and occasionally asked for some sort of update as to progress. The adjuster couldn’t be bothered with so much as just an acknowledgment, let alone an update. We heard absolutely nothing for about 17 weeks, until roughly August 9th. I had escalated the lack of communication through social media first, then ICBC’s Fair Practices Office. After that I finally received an email from the adjuster’s manager. In it, she never apologized for his ignoring us for over four months, nor explained why, but did promise to get back to me the following week with an update on my claim.
It’s no big surprise that the ICBC manager never followed up, but as I did have her email address, expected to be bugging her regularly. I still maintain that five months is far too long to take to settle a claim for a written-off bike and a pair of wheels.
In a development that should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, there were still more delays from ICBC on the bike damage claim. Immediately after the adjuster’s manager said they’d get back to me the following week, they went on vacation for two. Not only that, but at virtually the same time as I got their out-of-office auto-reply when I followed up with them, the Fair Practices Office, with whom I had escalated my claim a week or so prior to August 9th, responded to me. In particular, as I had suggested there was no deterrent for people who drive carelessly, they assured me (with absolutely no supporting evidence) that “fault still matters” and more laughable still, that the system still has “the same incentives” to drive safely. Never mind that no-fault insurance literally removes those incentives by banning customers from suing for injuries and damage, no matter how bad they may be. Wrongful death? Careless driving causing death? Manslaughter? Lifelong, permanent and/or severe injuries? Never fear, as the system includes the same nonexistent incentives it’s always had. And sorry, but in many cases, ICBC footing the bill for some therapy sessions and providing a lump sum impairment payment (more on this below) isn’t going to be nearly enough.
Bike Claim Suddenly Settled
I was afraid I’d been a little too snarky in an email exchange I had with the Fair Practices Office, but lo and behold on August 22nd I received a call from the adjuster. Again, no explanation for ghosting us and no apology, but (drum roll please) a settlement offer. I was to receive nearly $7300, which is almost what I paid for the bike and wheels, minus the tax. I signed the the acceptance letter immediately and received a cheque in the mail September 10th, a mere four days from the five month anniversary of the crash, and an apology from the manager for taking so long (but still nothing from the adjuster).
Permanent Impairment Payment
My Support and Recovery Specialist apparently discussed it with me, but my brain being what it is, I completely forgot. However, my injuries qualified me for a permanent impairment payment. While it really doesn’t come close to making up for an acquired brain injury, the lengthy recovery and rehab, or losing a spleen, to name just three, the money will at least help a bit, particularly when we buy another place. They have a very complex formula that factors everything into the calculation. There’s something for the broken ribs, the strokes, the brain injury, the right carotid artery dissection, the ruptured diaphragm, the splenectomy – everything. I don’t know how you accurately price being immunocompromised or a brain injury you may never fully recover from, but ICBC seems to have found a (very inadequate) formula. They also do a final review once you’re recovered medically to the fullest extent possible, to see if any further compensation is warranted.
I have no idea how high these payments can go, but given what I was paid, I can’t imagine that it’s anywhere near sufficient for more extreme injuries than mine, given that I suffered a life-altering brain injury and am permanently immunocompromised.
EI Nonsense
I’ll admit that this one is a bit of a head-scratcher, even by ICBC standards. As I said above, ICBC provides income replacement to 90% of your net income, to a maximum of a $113k salary.
My ICBC recovery specialist did an odd thing in early November. She asked if I would see if I qualify for federal EI sickness benefits. EI sickness benefits are usually the equivalent of short-term disability, only pay a maximum of $668 a week, and only last a maximum of 26 weeks.
Long story short, I submitted my EI application on October 3rd, and expected it to be denied, but I also had to wait for my final paycheque and vacation payout so that my ROE could be generated, so that the EI claim could be processed. Given that she reminded me that ICBC is secondary income replacement, I’d guess it was all about trying to reduce ICBC’s payout.
EI Sickness Benefits are also actually supposed to be applied for immediately after your accident, but I was collecting my full salary right up until I got LTD (our sick leave becomes STD. As well, you supposedly can’t collect ANY EI benefits and LTD at the same time, but I was led to believe I needed to do this so that ICBC would pay their top-up. Nonetheless, I still needed the claim denial because I have to tell them if, by some miracle, I actually do qualify for EI. Not only that, but philosophically, I feel that ICBC should have to pay income top-up, given I nearly lost my life at the hands of someone driving a car. It’s worth noting here, that if I didn’t have any STD or LTD benefits, ICBC would be on the hook for the entirety of 90% of my net pay for as long as I was being “medically” cared for. No one has defined this term for me but I suspect that once my cognitive therapy is complete and my return to work is underway, that’s when both Manulife and ICBC will begin to claw back benefits, and my EI claim will be long finished.
Update: I did, in fact, qualify for EI. Before anyone gets excited, according to the agent I spoke to by calling the 1-800 EI number, after they deduct for my vacation payout and then also make their deductions to my payments for LTD, I’ll end up with $61 a week after tax. Not only that, but they somehow set my recovery date for sometime in December. To extend my claim to the maximum of 26 weeks, I’ll need my doctor to sign a medical certificate with an estimate of when I might be recovered, which will be … ?
All this to reduce what ICBC has to pay by $61 a week for up to 26 weeks, or $1226 all-in. Bonus points for having to now deal with three different insurers; Manulife, ICBC and EI. Bonus bonus points for now also having to do biweekly reports. For a whopping $61 a week.
Overpay
On January 10th, I received the following by email:
I have an update regarding your income benefit. The Benefits Team has informed that there was an error with previous income calculation as they applied incorrect weekly LTD benefit rate. This created a $2107.67 overpayment. Moving forward your payments will be issued every four weeks in the amount of $465.58 - starting May 16th - to catch up on the overpayment. Please see below the calculation as provided by the Benefit Analyst. Do let me know if you have any questions regarding this.
Beyond the flowery preamble I didn’t bother including, there was no apology, no offer to discuss a repayment schedule – nothing. To be clear, it isn’t the actual money involved that bothers me. We are financially secure. The fact that she couldn’t even offer the slightest concern for the mistake ICBC made is what really sits badly with me. What if we did need that money or were in a more precarious financial position? I won’t even get into how bad the financial calculation example she provided was, let alone that we had been getting about $715 biweekly and will now get nothing until May 16th, when we will suddenly drop to $465 every four weeks. How lovely. I am fine with getting the correct amount, but not so much with their approach.
Luckily, my wife is at least part financial bloodhound and, once I shared the email with her, she had plenty of questions. I won’t hold my breath for a quick (or even any) reply. If it wasn’t clear to me before, it is now. ICBC doesn’t give a shit, regardless of how much they profess that their only goal is your complete recovery (even this is only so they can get you off the books when you return to work).
In Summary
ICBC lied during the family meeting at GF Strong, and my bike damage claim took about five months and near-endless frustration to get settled, but at least was a better offer than I expected and recommended therapies have generally been approved quickly. I also received an entirely insufficient lump sum benefit (given my injuries), ICBC began my income replacement top-up in mid-October but made me jump through EI hoops to get it, then overpaid me and decided to get the money back by suspending all payments for four months. I’m glad I have some income via LTD anyway.
After this last move, I’m pretty disappointed. I’m unimpressed by the enhanced care model, particularly as it’s seemingly designed so that you’ll hopefully give up, or it makes you jump through multiple hoops just to get insufficient benefits you’ve already paid for. They also don’t come close to holding drivers to account for careless driving. I simply can’t give it a thumbs up when some aspects of it are mired in endless delays and administrivia, while clearly always having a focus on saving money. Recovery isn’t cheap, even if they’d prefer it be.