Maritime Injury Law BlogMaintenance and Cure: Your Medical Treatment Rights
If you’ve been injured or fallen ill while working on a vessel, you may be wondering who pays for your medical treatment and how you’ll cover your bills while you recover. Many injured maritime workers don’t realize they’re entitled to medical benefits even if the accident was their own fault. This no-fault benefit, known as “maintenance and cure,” is a fundamental right guaranteed to all seamen who become ill or injured while in service to a vessel.
What Is “Maintenance”?
Maintenance is a daily living allowance designed to cover your basic needs while you’re unable to work and recovering from your injury or illness. This isn’t charity, it’s your right under federal maritime law.
Maintenance payments cover essential living expenses including rent or mortgage payments, utilities, food, and other basic necessities. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Atlantic Sounding Co. v. Townsend, most employers now pay maintenance rates ranging from $35 to $50 per day, though rates can be higher depending on your location and cost of living.
These payments begin from the date of your injury and continue until you either reach maximum medical improvement or are declared fit to return to duty. Critically, maintenance must be paid regardless of who caused your injury, even if it was entirely your own fault.
What is “Cure”?
Cure refers to all reasonable and necessary medical expenses related to your injury or illness. Your employer is responsible for covering a comprehensive range of medical costs, including doctor visits and specialist consultations, hospital stays and surgeries, physical therapy and rehabilitation programs, diagnostic tests such as MRIs, CT scans, and X-rays, prescription medications, medical equipment like wheelchairs, crutches, or braces, and transportation costs to and from medical appointments.
However, cure does not cover everything. Elective procedures unrelated to your work injury, experimental treatments not deemed medically necessary by your doctors, and second medical opinions obtained solely for litigation purposes are typically not covered. However, you can always seek additional opinions independently.
The key is that the treatment must be reasonably related to your maritime injury or illness and necessary for your recovery.
How Long Do These Benefits Last?
One of the most misunderstood aspects of maintenance and cure is its duration. Unlike traditional workers’ compensation programs with arbitrary time limits, maintenance and cure benefits continue until you reach “maximum medical improvement.”
Maximum medical improvement means your condition has stabilized and further treatment won’t significantly improve your medical state. This does not mean you’re fully healed or back to normal, you may still have permanent limitations or disabilities. It simply means you’ve reached a medical plateau.
There are no predetermined cutoffs. Your employer cannot simply terminate your benefits after six months or a year because they think it’s been long enough. For serious injuries, maintenance and cure benefits can last for months or even years. In cases where you’ll never reach maximum medical improvement and require permanent ongoing treatment, your employer must continue providing cure indefinitely.
Pre-Existing Conditions Don’t Disqualify You
Having a pre-existing medical condition does not prevent you from claiming maintenance and cure benefits. If your work aboard a vessel aggravates or worsens an existing condition, you remain fully entitled to these benefits.
For example, if you had a prior back injury that becomes significantly worse due to heavy lifting on deck, your employer must provide maintenance and cure for the aggravation. The only exception is if you intentionally concealed a serious medical condition on a pre-employment health questionnaire in a way that would have materially affected the employer’s decision to hire you.
Even in cases of alleged concealment, maritime law is clear: employers cannot recover maintenance and cure benefits they’ve already paid. They can only potentially stop future payments.
What Happens When Employers Refuse to Pay?
Your employer’s obligation to provide maintenance and cure is absolute, with very few valid defenses. When an employer willfully fails to pay these benefits or unreasonably delays payment, they’re acting in bad faith.
Bad faith denial of maintenance and cure can result in serious consequences for the employer, including punitive damages designed to punish the employer’s misconduct, and additional compensation beyond your actual medical expenses and lost wages.
If your employer is providing inadequate maintenance, denying necessary medical treatment, or unreasonably delaying your benefit payments, document everything. Keep detailed records of all medical appointments, treatments, and communications with your employer. Then contact an experienced maritime attorney immediately.
Maintenance and cure is your guaranteed right as a maritime worker. These benefits exist independently of any Jones Act negligence claim you may have you can receive maintenance and cure even if your employer did nothing wrong, and you can pursue additional damages for negligence on top of these benefits.
If you are denied the medical care you need or adequate living expenses while you recover, don’t wait. The maritime attorneys at Stacey & Jacobsen, PLLC, have decades of experience protecting the rights of injured maritime workers. Contact us today for a free consultation to discuss your case and ensure you receive every benefit you’re entitled to under the law.