For decades asbestos has been known human carcinogen and major health hazard causally related to asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma. It is still not banned in the United States. Recent efforts to provide statistics assessments of the hazard haven’t proven to be unsuccessful.
Copyright
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Risk Assessments for Asbestos Present Difficulties
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Urgent Need for Workers Compensation Flu Pandemic Planning
Friday, September 11, 2009
Breast Cancer Linked to Night Shift Work by Danish Compensation System
Thursday, September 10, 2009
CMS Schedules Town Hall Meeting to Discuss a Secure Internet Portal for Submissions of Proposed WCMSAs
- Overview of CMS plans to make available a secure Internet web-based portal or interface for the WCMSA submission process for the various affected stakeholders.
- Question & Answer Session. Only questions regarding the ongoing implementation of a secure Internet web-based portal or interface for the WCMSA will be addressed. No policy or case specific questions will be accepted.
CMS Lists How to Avoid 10 Top WCMSA Errors
1. No medical records for the last two years of treatment
2. Claims payment history missing or undated
3. Response to development requests incomplete
4. Calculation method stated as fee schedule when state does not have a fee schedule
5. Calculation method not stated for the medical set-aside
6. Total settlement amount missing or unclear
7. No rated age statement from submitter confirming that all rated ages obtained on the claimant have been included
8. Payout amount not used in annuity situations
9. Proposed medical set-aside amount is missing, unclear, or inconsistent with other information
10. Proposed prescription drug set-aside amount is missing, unclear, or inconsistent with other information
Congressional Action on Workers’ Compensation
From coast to coast, the patchwork of state workers’ compensation systems continues to be under constant scrutiny for change. The problems seem global in characteristic as the frustrations continue to rise. The fate of the entire system may result in the effort to enact or defeat legislation to embrace a new national commission on workers’ compensation.
The States universally enacted Workers’ Compensation in 1911 in an effort to replace civil litigation with an administrative system. The approach was to provide a remedial system to injured workers in a summary manner while providing a cost effective approach for employers. Despite the efforts to reduce benefits and limit access States are struggling to maintain the system in one fashion or another. Rumors are spreading that New York, a former industrial jurisdiction, may join the list of radically modifying their system.
The once touted as a “no fault” system, the nation’s workers’ compensation has been besieged by efforts to assert more restrictive requirements for benefits. Medical delivery has stagnated in a complex world of etiology and evidential proof of occupational claims. The cost of soaring medical care, once shifted easily to collateral health insurance companies and the Social Security system, has been met with convoluted reimbursement efforts. Large corporations and public entities that in the past were able to provide an additional stream of revenue to injured workers are now rapidly drying up and or become non-existent under bankruptcy laws. State governments, that maintain the administrative system, are now facing a monumental shortage is revenue and are closing down operations and converting some for criminal and economic sanctions to merely benefit the general state revenues. The few remaining second injury funds have become insolvent and the future remains bleak as the premiums committed to finance these agencies and programs become depleted.
On January 22, 2009, Representative Joe Baca, a Democrat from California, introduced legislation (HR635) to establish a second National Commission on State Workers' Compensation Laws [Commission]. The first Commission was established under the Nixon administration in accordance with the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The new legislation that is now supported by representatives of injured workers lacks co-sponsors. Opposing the legislation is a long line of Industry based employers including the Americans Manufacturing Association and the National Chamber of Commerce.
John Burton, the former chair of the 1971 Commission, in a recent interview, commented that many of the present systems do not even comply with threshold recommendations of the original Commission and that many of the present programs face some serious challenges.
Patrice Woeppel, Ed.D., author of Depraved Indifference the Workers' Compensation System, has called for a single payer medical system to embrace both work and non-worker related injuries. By allowing the employer and insurance carrier to control the medical care she indicates, results in "restricting treatment to the cursorily palliative" or delay and denial of treatment to the injured worker. Additionally medical plan administrative costs of duplicative and wasteful.
As the national health care debate continues and the final legislation unfolds, the workers’ compensation medical delivery issues and wage replacements for temporary and permanent disability may become incorporated into direct or ancillary legislation. A second Commission, in one form or another, aimed at nationalizing the workers compensation system, may indeed become a reality.