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(c) 2010-2024 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.

Monday, December 10, 2007

24 Hour Care Emerging as Good Medicine for the Ailing Workers Compensation System and CMS Conflicts

All the national political candidates are now framing the health care issue as a cure-all to the ailing American system. One must take a look back in time. History is known to repeat itself and turning the page back a decade in time reveals that the Clinton I plan considered a merger between the ailing workers' compensation system and a national health care proposal.

Insurance carriers are now rapidly moving into coalitions to unify under 24 hour care proposals.

The initially proposed Clinton II proposal lacks sufficient detail to determine whether the proposal is yet again included. One would think that the real answer to complexities brought about through reimbursement demand of CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) and long avoided reimbursement issues, would be the merger of both workers' compensation systems (all multiple and unmanageable entities) into a single payer system thus avoid the duplications of costs and litigation expenses. Congress already rejected proposals offered by some interested parties to circumvent the system last legislative term.

Integrated health care would put workers' compensation back on the track of maintaining its philosophical integrity of maintaining the concept 'of "periodic payments" for disability and thus avoiding the "buy outs" of medical services in "lump sum" packages thereby circumventing the periodic payment/wage replacement nature of workers' compensation payments. Injured workers would be able to continue to receive medical monitoring and evaluation through diagnostic care and observation.

The lump sum "buy outs," encouraged by insurance carriers, merely defeat the public policy issues of workers' compensation periodic payments and abrogate their responsibility and the integrity of the workers' compensation system(s) while shifting yet again the responsibility to the taxpayers and an overburdened Medicare/Medicaid system.

A program of 24 hour care will remove from controversy medical coverage and would eliminate unnecessary litigation and administrative costs while keeping benefits to workers on a periodic basis which was the foundation of the workers’ compensation systems.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

NJ Ranks 2nd In Asbestos Related Disease


The legacy of asbestos related disease continues in New Jersey. Around the time of World War II New Jersey was an epicenter of the production asbestos fiber. New Jersey was equal distant from the major shipyards on the East Coast and it was in a major railroad network that allowed it to move asbestos product both in raw format and in furnish goods.

Unfortunately, the legacy of asbestos disease continues to cause a former workers and those exposed to products major to his disease and illness. The United States government has reported an increase in asbestos related disease in New Jersey. The state ranks as number two in the nation with reported asbestos related disease.

Asbestos production and consumption between 1970 and 1979, on a national basis, amounted to 1,060,015 metric tons alone. Since his best is related disease has a latency period, of sometimes several decades between the exposure and the disease, the impact is now being reported demonstrating increased incidence of mesothelioma in the United States. There are major uncertainties in predicting mesothelioma incidents and some investigators project the maximum mesothelioma incidents will not occur until about 2020 in the United States.