Two things happened this week to raise the consciousness of the public towards the inadequacies of workers compensation. First was a major piece of reporting by Pro Publica and NPR that conducted an exhaustive examination of workers compensation benefits, state by state. You can find the articles here:

www.propublica.org/article/photos-living-through-california-workers-comp-cuts

www.propublica.org/article/the-demolition-of-workers-compensation

The reporters chief findings:

• Since 2003, legislators in 33 states have passed workers’ comp laws that reduce benefits or make it more difficult for those with certain injuries and diseases to qualify for them.
• Where a worker gets hurt matters. Because each state has developed its own system, an amputated arm can literally be worth two or three times as much on one side of a state line than the other.
• Many states, Texas among them, have not only shrunk the payments to injured workers, they’ve also cut them off after an arbitrary time limit — even if workers haven’t recovered.
• Employers and insurers increasingly control medical decisions, such as whether an injured worker needs surgery.

As a workers compensation attorney who has been practicing since before 2003, I can attest that changes made to Texas’ system that occurred after 2003 were the second such effort to reduce workers compensation benefits and make them more difficult to obtain.

Even though other states made changes to their workers’ compensation schemes in part due to the success Texas has had reducing benefits, most of those states still did not take the more extreme path of reducing benefits to injured workers to the levels that Texas has done. This graphic is illustrative:

 

Those of us representing injured workers have complained for a long time that there is a race to the bottom amongst the states in what is being paid to injured workers. That race is on the verge of breaking the system. The only question is will Republicans in safely gerrymandered districts have the courage to fix the system before it breaks?

The second thing to raise some consciousness was a report put out by OSHA which can be found here:

www.dol.gov/osha/report/20150304-inequality.pdf

That report states another aspect of workers compensation law that has long been complained about by those of us who represent injured workers:

“The costs of workplace injuries are borne primarily by injured workers, their families, and taxpayer-supported components of the social safety net. Changes in statebased workers’ compensation insurance programs have made it increasingly difficult for injured workers to receive the full benefits (including adequate wagereplacement payments and coverage for medical expenses) to which they are entitled. Employers now provide only a small percentage (about 20%) of the overall financial cost of workplace injuries and illnesses through workers’ compensation. This cost-shift has forced injured workers, their families and taxpayers to subsidize the vast majority of the lost income and medical care costs generated by these conditions.”

That is, the public, not the workers’ compensation insurer and not the business that purchases the insurance, bears the primary burden for the costs of injured workers. This occurs through the cost-shifting of workers onto other forms of payment.

I cannot even begin to count the number of times I have heard adjusters state that a workers isn’t being disenfranchised because the worker can just apply for social security disability. Likewise, we frequently have problems on cases with doctors advising injured workers to just put their injury on medicaid so that the doctor can avoid all the pre-authorization hassles that comes with workers compensation.

One problem is the race to the bottom that impacts all injured workers. The public’s attitude is “As long as it doesn’t affect me, I don’t care. Out of sight, out of mind.” But this report confirms that it does affect the public. When the system finally breaks, remember that.