Workers' compensation systems require injured employees to overcome cumbersome requirements in order to obtain health‐care and salary‐replacement benefits. The structural vulnerabilities of Latino immigrants put them at greater risk for workplace injuries and further complicate their search for redress. As a medico‐legal system, workers' compensation relies on medical professionals to interrogate the bodies of injured low‐wage immigrant workers. This article aims to clarify how workers' trajectories are impacted by interactions with health‐care system. Utilizing activist research methods, I collaborated with Fuerza Laboral, a worker center in Rhode Island, from the fall of 2013 to the end of 2014, to survey and interview injured Latino workers, physicians, and legal professionals. I bring together worker narratives and physician reflections to identify how the compensation system's reliance on biomedicine contributes to poor outcomes for injured immigrant workers. Considering the medical “gaze,” prejudice against injured workers, racial and ethnic bias in medicine, and the pitfalls of cultural competency training, I outline the mechanics of how the medical‐legal system corrodes the patient‐physician relationship. Evaluating the risks of positioning physicians as gatekeepers, I advocate for uncoupling medical evaluations from compensation cases, the importance of healthcare system reform, and medical curricula that emphasize structural analysis. Such reforms may liberalize access to health care for injured workers as well as stymie bias in medical education.