California Applicants' Attorneys Association Affiliates With Labor

Teamsters and Workers’ Compensation Attorneys Affiliate To Strengthen Political Action Team

SACRAMENTO, CA - The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), AFLCIO, and the California Applicants’ Attorneys Association (CAAA) today announced a new Affiliation Agreement. CAAA has affiliated with the IBT’s Joint Councils No. 7 and 42, and its California Teamsters Public Affairs Council. The two organizations have agreed to coordinate their activities and pursue mutual interests relating to policy and politics.

“The Affiliation Agreement between the Teamsters and the California Applicants’ Attorneys Association helps both improve our abilities to meet the needs of our respective memberships,” said Randy Cammack, International Vice President of the IBT and Co-Chair of the California Teamsters Public Affairs Council. “The Teamsters will benefit from CAAA’s expertise in advising us on workers’ compensation policy and workplace safety issues. CAAA will benefit from our presence throughout the state at the local level, and our expertise in working for improved public policy relating to working people,” added Rome Aloise, IBT Vice President and the other Co-Chair of the California Teamsters Public Affairs Council.

“Our members represent tens of thousands of working Californians, and we have always worked closely with organized labor on behalf of those injured on the job. Our Affiliation with the Teamsters will provide our members and their clients with an even more powerful voice on their behalf,” said Barry Hinden, president of CAAA. “This Affiliation will harness the power of our two organizations to focus
on state and federal issues that jointly affect our members, including legislation, public policy and political action.”

“Our organization of professionals will remain autonomous and self-governing,” said Hinden. “We are excited to join with others who share our goals and objectives and look forward to an even closer relationship with all of organized labor. This is an opportunity to become even stronger advocates for Californians injured on the job.”

Cammack, Aloise, and Hinden said the partnership between CAAA and the IBT is part of an effort by both organizations to build bridges and form new alliances. The Teamsters, for example, have organized or affiliated airline pilots and other whitecollar professionals. CAAA has embarked on a new initiative to build bridges to like-minded organizations in organized labor, and the civil rights and consumer advocacy communities.

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California Supreme Court Agrees to Review COVID Take Home Liability Case

The California Supreme Court has accepted for review the question of whether the workers’ compensation act bars a claim against an employer by a household contact of an employee who contacted COVID at work. The court granted the request, made under California Rules of Court, rule 8.548, that the court will decide questions of California law presented in a matter pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. 

California Workers' Compensation Rates Going Up in 2014

Despite the fact that recent legislation in California limited access to the Worker's Compensation system even further, and imposed medical treatment review procedures without the availability of an adversary system, worker's Compensation rates are increasing in 2014.

Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones today adopted an advisory average pure premium rate of 2.70 dollars per 100 dollars of employer payroll for workers compensation rates effective January 1, 2014.

The adopted amount is lower than that proposed by the Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating
Bureau of California's (WCIRB). The WCIRB's proposed advisory average rate was $2.75 per $100 of payroll.

The WCIRB's proposed advisory average pure premium rate is 8.7% ($2.75 per $100 of payroll) above the industry's average filed rates as of July 1, 2013 and the adopted pure premium rate ($2.70 per $100 of payroll) is 6.7% above the industry's average filed rates as of July 1, 2013.

Commissioner Jones, the WCIRB and the public members' actuary all agree that the overall impact of SB 863 (2012) continues to result in savings for the workers' compensation system.

The California Department of Insurance continues to observe that medical and indemnity losses are outpacing wage growth and consequently, the average advisory pure premium will increase in 2014.
Media Note:

• The commissioner's pure premium decision is advisory only. Pursuant to California law, the commissioner does not set or have authority over workers' compensation insurance rates. The commissioner's advisory pure premium rate is not predictive of what an individual insurance company may charge its policyholders because the review of pure premium rates is just one component of insurance pricing. 
• Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California

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Naloxone Expansion In California Will Enable Family, Friends To Save Lives At Home

Today's post was shared by Huffington Post and comes from www.huffingtonpost.com

Family and friends of more drug users in California will soon be able to reverse overdoses at home with a lifesaving injectable drug. On Thursday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 635, authored by Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, which will expand the use of the drug naloxone. Naloxone, also known by its brand name Narcan, can be administered to a person suffering from an opiate overdose to restore breathing. Naloxone is non-addictive, non-toxic, fairly cheap and is easy to administer through the nose or intravenously. It was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1971 and is stocked in thousands of emergency rooms, ambulances and post-surgery recovery rooms across the country. But frequently, opiate users don't make it to the hospital in time. For that reason, in 2008, California implemented a pilot program in seven counties that allowed drug users, their family and friends, health care professionals and addiction counselors to administer naloxone in an emergency -- and be protected from civil or criminal liability if anything goes wrong. The bill that Brown signed into law extends the program across all of California. Starting Jan. 1, drug users and their family and friends will be able to request a naloxone prescription from a doctor or addiction treatment program. For example, "if a teen is known to be picking up OxyContin, their family might -- in the treatment process -- want a naloxone prescription, just in case," Ammiano's communications director Carlos...

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California is most expensive state for workers' comp

Ouch -- the cost of workers' compensation in California is more expensive than any other state in the nation, a new study says.

The Workers' Compensation Premium Rate Ranking Summary from Oregon's Department of
Today's post is shared from
Consumer and Business Services reveals that California businesses spend $3.48 for every $100 of payroll issue on workers' comp expenses.

The ranking demonstrates a trend, as California was the third-most expensive state in 2012 and the fifth-most expensive in 2010, the Los Angeles Daily News reports.

The $3.48 mark represent a 188 percent of the median cost of $1.85 for all 50 states.

Separately, a new study looking at the 2013 fee schedule changes projects that California workers comp office visit payments will increase 8 percent overall.

"California's workers' compensation system is incredibly inefficient," said Jerry Azevedo, a spokesman for the California-based Workers' Compensation Action Network, told the Daily News.

Azevedo's group aims to reduce costs for employers and improve services to injured workers.

Second on the list is Connecticut, at $2.87 of every $100 in payroll going toward workers' compensation costs. The top five are rounded out by New Jersey ($2.82), New York ($2.75) and Alaska ($2.68).

Ranking lowest was North Dakota, where a mere 88 cents of every $100 in payroll goes toward workers' comp costs.

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CCWC at Disneyland

Today's post is authored by Julius Young and shared from workcompzone.com I’ve been attending the 2014 California Coalition on Workers’ Compensation annual conference at Disneyland, which wrapped up yesterday. On Wednesday the conference kicked off with a blogger’s panel featuring myself, insurance consultant and blogger Peter Rousmaniere, Workcompcentral.com publisher David DePaolo, and WorkersCompensation.com publisher Bob Wilson.  Mark Walls of Safety National Insurance moderated a lively discussion that got into some “out of the box” discussions about the direction of workers’ comp; in a coming post I’ll reprise some of the thoughts from the panel and offer some further insights. CCWC is a major player on the California workers’ comp scene. Many of California’s big employers are members. I’m talking companies like Safeway, Walt Disney and UPS. CCWC is one of several prominent employer advocates in Sacramento along with the Cal Chamber and groups like WCAN (Workers Compensation Action Network). Members of CCWC were pivotal in drafting and pushing through the 2012 SB 863 California comp reforms. Key board members clearly have the ear of Brown Administration policymakers. And the Sacramento lobbyists used by CCWC, Paul Yoder and Jason Schmelzer, are a talented bunch. In short, the conference attracts many of the key employer and insurer players in California workers’ comp. Here are some of the more interesting things I heard and some of my random impressions from the...

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California, Workers' Compensation and The Nuclear Option

There has been a call among eminent commentators in California to invoke “The Nuclear Option,” abolishment of the Workers’ Compensation Act entirely.  The suggestion was aired in response to proposed legislation (AB 1309) that would implement a statutory limitation on extraterritorial coverage for professional athletes and reflects a trend to emasculate the benefit program by incremental “take backs.”  

An analysis demonstrates that the law, proposed by California Insurance Committee Chairman Henry Peres (D-Fresno), may indeed be the triggering mechanism to implode the entire system both in California and in the Nation. It may very well be the sentinel event.

California has had a logarithmically problematic workers’ compensation program for at least the past 3 decades. It has been literally a political football. The promise to provide a simple, economically conservative and expeditious administrative system of benefits has turned into an outright nightmare. Both labor and Industry have tried, to no avail, to meet those noble goals against a tide of crippling economic downturn, new and costly medical modalities, waves of emerging occupational diseases, and an onslaught of outside vendors who are “eating the lunch” of the system.

Firms to pay $1.1-billion in long-running lead paint lawsuit

In an historic ruling, a California Judge, held the lead paint pigment manufacturers liable for the damage they caused children by placing toxic lead pigment into paint. The companies will be held accountable for the remediation required to make homes and other buildings safe. The case was prosecuted by a team of lawyers, including nationally recognized lead litigation experts, Motley Rice, Providence, RI. This article is shared from the latimes.com

A Northern California judge Monday ordered three companies to pay $1.1 billion to remove lead-based paint from inside California homes, concluding a 13-year legal case.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James P. Kleinberg ruled that ConAgra, NL Industries and Sherwin-Williams created a “public nuisance” by selling lead-based paint for decades before it was banned in 1978, finding them liable for exposing children to a known poison.

The opinion set aside $605 million, or 55% of the judgment, to pay for lead removal in Los Angeles County. The money will go into a fund administered by the state’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Branch and will pay for inspections and lead abatement on the inside walls of tens of thousands of homes.

“The court is convinced there are thousands of California children in the Jurisdictions whose lives can be improved, if not saved through a lead abatement plan,” the judge’s ruling said.

Local governments sued major paint manufacturers in 2000,...


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Click here to read the complete Decision. People v. Atlantic Richfield Company, et al.
Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara
Case No. 1-00-CV-788657

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California's WVPP Legislation: A Potential Benefit for Workers and Industry?

California's Senate Bill 553 (SB 553), which mandates a Workplace Violence Prevention Plan (WVPP) for most employers by July 1, 2024, has a primary focus on employee safety. However, it might also have a secondary benefit – reduced workers' compensation insurance costs.

California sends misinformation to 246,000 new Medicaid enrollees

Today's post was shared by Kaiser Health News and comes from www.sacbee.com

LOS ANGELES -- California has mistakenly sent letters to 246,000 low-income residents, warning they may need to find new doctors next year under the state's newly expanded Medicaid program. The error frustrated counties and community health centers, which have repeatedly assured patients they can keep their providers when the Affordable Care Act takes effect in 2014. The patients are part of the state's "bridge to reform" program, which was designed to cover uninsured, poor Californians until they became eligible for Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal here. The program launched in 2011 and more than 600,000 people across the state enrolled in county-based health coverage. Many of them formed relationships with doctors and started seeking regular care. But county and clinic administrators said the incorrect mailing this month has put the counties' efforts in jeopardy. The mix-up occurred as people are scrambling to figure out how the health law impacts them, and as private policy holders have been receiving letters canceling their insurance plans. "The whole key to the success is that people seamlessly transition to Medi-Cal," said Sean South, an associate director at the California Primary Care Association. "It is vitally important that we don't confuse them." But that's what happened when the incorrect letters started going out on Nov. 1, said clinic and county officials. Patients immediately began calling and showing up with questions about the letter, said Eva Serrano, a...

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California Trial Starts Against Lead Paint Industry for Creating a Public Nuisance

After years of pre-trial arguments and following the denial of summary judgment motions by lead paint companies, Sherwin Williams and NL Industry, the case brought by several California entities has commenced in California.

"The lawsuit differs from other unsuccessful attempts in seven other states to sue lead

paint manufacturers by arguing the companies violated state public nuisance laws, rather than health laws. Government lawyers won’t have to show that specific individuals were harmed in a direct way, only that the industry assisted in the creation of a public nuisance."

Click here to read the complete article: "$1 Billion Lead Cleanup Lawsuit Underway after 13 Years of Legal Maneuvering" 

California Supreme Court Bars Household Contact Covid Claims

Today, the California Supreme Court decided that the Workers’ Compensation Act [WCA] did not bar a derivative claim. However, using a public policy rationale, it did not extend an employer's duty of care to an employee's household contacts who contracted COVID-19.

California Applicants' Attorneys Association Announces New Legislative Team

The California Applicants’ Attorneys Association (CAAA), whose members represent Californians injured on the job, today announced a new legislative advocacy team. CAAA President Barry Hinden said, “CAAA is announcing a new team that will be a strong voice on behalf of the rights and dignity of Californians injured while doing their jobs. Our legislative team looks forward to working with all stakeholders to insure that insurance carriers pay to heal workers’ on-the-job injuries and income support while disabled. Over the past six years many families have been left without medical care or disability compensation due to changes demanded by Governor Schwarzenegger. We look forward to working with the new governor, legislature and the workers’ compensation community to make changes to restore balance, and make the system work more effectively and efficiently by reducing unnecessary delays and costs.”

Hinden announced the following legislative representation team:

Mike Herald – Legislative & Policy Advocate – Mr. Herald, an attorney, has spent the past two decades advocating on behalf of low income Californians in the State Capitol while representing the Western Center on Law & Poverty. “My experience representing struggling California families has shown me how important it is people injured at work receive adequate insurance coverage. Workers’ compensation insurance is to provide workers the opportunity to heal, knowing they won’t lose their home or drown in debt. It is in everyone’s interest to have adequate insurance so that costs for injured workers do not fall upon the taxpayers. I look forward to collaborating with legislators, administrators and stakeholders to improve the workers’ compensation insurance system.” Mr. Herald will be CAAA’s lead legislative representative in the Capitol.

Richie Ross – Legislative and Political Consultant – Mr. Ross, a longtime California labor advocate and campaign consultant, has advised CAAA for more than 15 years. He will now serve as political and legislative consultant, advising CAAA on strategy, lobbying, and political contributions and campaigns. “I look forward to strengthening CAAA’s alliances with organized labor, civil rights and consumer organizations. Californians injured at their jobs often have difficulty getting insurance companies to pay their legitimate claims.  There are many others who face similar obstacles. And when insurance companies don’t meet their obligations, it is the taxpayers who end up footing the bill. Californians want to prevent that cost shifting.”

Sen. Martha Escutia (Ret.) – Legislative Counsel – "The Senators (ret.) Firm - legislative counsel: founded by former Senators Martha Escutia and Joe Dunn, the firm brings extensive legislative and political experience to the CAAA team. In fact, Senators (ret) Escutia and Dunn were two of the three "no" votes in the State Senate on SB899. Sen. Escutia (ret) will serve as the lead partner from The Senators Firm for CAAA. Ms Escutia, trained as a civil rights attorney, and said, “I look forward to using my experience in advocating for the civil rights of women and minorities on behalf of those injured at work. Those injured on the job often have their medical care delayed or denied, and their permanent disabilities are largely uncompensated, and insurance companies discriminate in apportioning disability compensation. I intend to involve diverse California communities in efforts to improve California’s workers’ compensation insurance system, and seeking fair compensation and prompt, quality medical care.”
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For over 3 decades the Law Offices of Jon L. Gelman 1.973.696.7900 jon@gelmans.com have been representing injured workers and their families who have suffered work related accident and injuries.

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Dreams dashed in fatal college tour bus crash

Today's post was shared by Trucker Lawyers and comes from bigstory.ap.org and highlights the need for more regulation and enforcement of transportation safety. If products are continued to be manufactured, operated, and maintained in an unsafe manner tragedies in the workplace will continue. Accidents just don't happen and hopefully can be avoided. 

Rescuers tend to walking wounded after a fiery crash involving several vehicles, Thursday, April 10, 2014, just north of Orland, Calif., that left at least nine dead. Authorities said it is not yet clear what caused the crash but that it involved a tour bus, a FedEx truck and a Nissan Altima. (AP Photo/The Chico Enterprise-Record, Dan Reidel)   Map locates Orland, Calif., where three vehicles crashed and killed at least nine; 6c x 2 inches; 295.2 mm x 50 mm;   Massive flames are seen devouring both vehicles just after the crash, and clouds of smoke billowed into the sky Thursday April 10, 2014 until firefighters had quenched the fire, leaving behind scorched black hulks of metal. The FedEx tractor-trailer crossed a grassy freeway median in Northern California and slammed into the bus carrying high school students on a visit to a college. At least nine were killed in the fiery crash, authorities said. (AP Photo/Jeremy Lockett)   Emergency crews look over wreckage from a crash between a semi and a tour bus on Thursday, April 10, 2014, on Interstate 5 near Orland, Calif. Authorities said it is not yet clear what caused the crash but that it involved a tour bus, a FedEx truck and a Nissan Altima. At least Nine people were killed Thursday and dozens injured in the fiery crash between a FedEx delivery truck and a charter bus carrying high school students on a visit to a Northern California college, authorities said. (AP...

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Workers' Compensation: FMCSA Orders Immediate Shut ...

Apr 08, 2014

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has ordered Scapadas Magicas LLC, a passenger carrier operating in the United States, to immediately cease ...

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Workers' Compensation: Transportation Accidents: Data ...

Jul 22, 2013

New technology in the coming years maybe become critical evidence in determining the casual relationship of transportation accidents as well as whether the employee deviated from the employment at the time of the event.

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Workers' Compensation: Transportation Injuries Continue to ...

Sep 27, 2012

Workplace injuries involving transportation continue to be major contributing factors to fatalities in the United States. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported preliminary data for 2011 reflecting that transportation ...

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Workers' Compensation: FMCSA Orders DND International ...

Apr 06, 2014

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has ordered DND International, Inc., USDOT No. 1434005, to immediately shut down after declaring the ...

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California employer sentenced for insurance fraud

Employer fraud is rampant. As costs to do business increase the underground economy continues to expand. Today's post was shared by votersinjuredatwork and comes from www.dailynews.com

A West Hills man was sentenced Thursday to 29 days in county jail and three years’ probation after pleading guilty to one count of insurance fraud for failing to report employee income in order to pay lower premiums on his air-conditioning company’s workers’ compensation policy. Officials with the California Department of Insurance said Douglas Lambert, 48, did not report or under-reported employee income to Clarendon National Insurance Co. from 2006 to 2009 for Lambert Air Conditioning, a company he owned and operated in Visalia, near Fresno in Northern California. “Fraud is a multimillion-dollar enterprise, which costs consumers over $210 million annually,” said Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones in a statement. “Lambert cheated both Clarendon National and the State of California out of over $110,000, and by doing so passed the cost of his fraud onto consumers across the state,” Lambert was living and working in Tulare County at the time the initial complaint was filed with the Department of Insurance and was prosecuted in Northern California. Authorities said he filed at least one workers’ compensation claim for an employee’s injury during the time frame of the investigation even though he was not paying insurance on the employee’s wages. He was ordered to pay $110,381 in restitution and will serve his sentence in Los Angeles County jail. While he was living up north, a spokesman for the department said he...

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Toni Atkins prepares for Assembly speakership

Today's post was shared by CAAA and comes from capitolweekly.net

Toni Atkins For Toni Atkins, a coal miner’s daughter and the first in her family to graduate from college, the road from Virginia coal country to San Diego to Speaker of the state Assembly has been long and winding. Atkins, a San Diego Democrat who said she can “really appreciate the depths and the breadth of the people who live in California,” was chosen the next speaker in a closed-door caucus of Democrats, who control the 80-member Assembly with a supermajority. She currently serves as the Assembly’s majority leader. She will succeed Speaker John Pérez, a former L.A.-area labor activist, who is termed out this year and is running for state controller. Atkins, like Pérez, is openly gay, although her sexual orientation has drawn relatively little notice in the Capitol. Pérez served as Atkins’ mentor, she said. “I feel really fortunate the speaker has given me the opportunity to be both the Majority Whip and the Majority Leader,” Atkins said. She’ll be leading the lower house despite concerns – at least in the north state – that an old tradition over equitable leadership distribution between Northern and Southern California. “For 40 years there has been an unspoken — and unbroken — rule that Southern California splits leadership of the Legislature with the Bay Area and greater Northern California. This year, Southern California leaders could seize complete control of the...

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The Great California Trade Off 2012

Rumors spread like wildfire this week as alleged secret back-room dealing continued in an effort to reform the failing California workers compensation system, yet again. The great trade-off of 2012 appears to be a major move to control and limit medical delivery and disability benefits at all cost.

Of critical importance is the fact that as goes California so goes the nation. Historically, changes made in California will slowly advance across the country and become adopted as a national wave of reform.

What has been leaked to the media, and some stakeholders, by a coalition of Labor and Industry management representatives, is yet another bandaid attempt to to control medical delivery in an effort to reduce both treatment costs, and ultimately reduce the number of cases utilizing the system.

While on the books it looks great that injured workers may get a potential increase of $700 million in increased permanent disability benefits, the trade-off is the imposition of a stringently controlled, speeded-up, and rationed medical benefits.

For employers to truly benefit from a Workers' Compensation program that works, employees need to receive the best medical treatment available to cure and relieve their work related medical conditions, and an adequate program of disability payments.

The proposed reforms limit medical choice, limit medical protocols, take away disability modifiers and impose penalties for out of network medical care in the name of expediency.

The problems facing California are not unique to that state. The entire nation, both within the workers' compensation system, and without, are facing similar issues.

One would hope that California would set a high standard for the nation, such as it attempted to do with heightened requirements for automobile emission testing and safety. However, to eliminate treatment options available to injured workers merely for the purpose reducing costs is a fast track program that ignores the need to achieve the best medical result and provide adequate compensation to injured workers.

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California state Sen. Ron Calderon accepted $88,000 in bribes, FBI affidavit alleges

California workers' compensation scandal headlines the news over medical treatment bribes.  Today's post is shared from sacbee.com

State Sen. Ron Calderon accepted about $88,000 in bribes from an undercover FBI agent posing as a film studio owner and a Southern California hospital executive during a wide-ranging probe into his conduct as a legislator, according to a 124-page affidavit published online Wednesday by cable news network Al Jazeera America. No charges have been filed against Calderon, a Democrat from Montebello. His attorney, Mark Geragos, did not return calls Wednesday. The federal affidavit, filed with the court under seal as the FBI sought a search warrant for Calderon’s office, alleges that he worked with interest groups in a pay-to-play fashion, accepting money in exchange for promises to carry or amend legislation to their benefit. It details an arrangement to funnel money for the Calderon family’s later use through a nonprofit organization run by his brother Tom Calderon. It describes an instance in which Calderon hired a female undercover agent as a staff member as a favor to another undercover agent despite her apparent lack of qualifications for the job. It says that as Calderon steered legislation, he asked those he thought would benefit to secure jobs for his children, Jessica and Zachary. “One way you could be a real help to (my daughter) is, you got any work?” Calderon said to an undercover agent posing as the film studio owner during a June 2012 dinner in Pico Rivera, according to the affidavit. “I told you, man, anything...

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Congress, Health Care & Unintended Consequences

This past week some very dramatic things happened in the workers’ compensation world. The US Senate moved forward on initiating a floor debate on health care. At the same time, a group of workers’ compensation scholars met in Washington DC to discuss the future of workers’ compensation and the interplay with social security disability.

 Highlights of the NASI (National Academy of Social Insurance) conference convened in Washington were findings presented by eminent leaders in the field. Professor John Burton, Rutgers University, pointed out that newly created barriers to workers’ compensation were pushing more injured workers to the Social Security disability system for benefits. This reflects a phenomenon that occurred in the late 1970’s when a study commissioned by the US Department of Labor and conducted by Mt. Sinai Hospitals’ Environmental Sciences Laboratory, revealed that the inadequate benefit delivery system of workers’ compensation for asbestos related illness, was forcing injured workers and their families into the civil justice arena for adequate compensation.

The problems have not changed in decades; they have only gotten worse, maturing into a system that is in critical condition and on life support. In 1980 Irving J. Selikoff, M.D. reported, “There has been widespread acknowledgement of significant problems with disability compensation for workers in the United States. One major area of concern has been the shortcomings with regard to occupational disease. Whatever the suitability of current workers’ compensation systems in the 50 states for injuries and work accidents, there has been little disagreement about the inadequacies of such systems for workers who become disabled by illness or, if they die, for their surviving dependents.”

Complex questions continue to exist between the scientific and legal communities as to the path to be taken. Barriers placed into the path of recovery, including pre-existing and co-existing conditions, which result in limited or delayed recovery and major shifting of the economic responsibility upon the public/private benefit systems need to be removed. The unspoken social consequences continue as a silent epidemic as families and survivors struggle in silence.

Looking backward over the noble experiment in California which turned sour, Tom Rankin, former President of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, expressed his regret of the reform. The former Labor leader theorized that the results were “unintended consequences.” Indeed he is looking forward to solutions springing forth in a “public option” embedded into the national health care legislation.

Some participants at the NASI conference alleged a major shortcoming of the California workers’ compensation legislative reform effort. Doug Kim, a lobbyist for the claimant’s attorneys, disclosed that the injured workers’ advocates were not invited to partake in the discussion that lead up to crafting the initial drafts of the 2004 California reform legislation SB 899.

History reveals, that when the theoretical reforms were practically applied, the injured workers suffered serious setbacks. If these were in fact “unintended consequences,” then one must consider the active involvement of all stakeholders when looking forward to solutions. The courts in California have consistently upheld challenges to the inequitable results, pointing to the legislative intent to reduce costs. Absent from the discussions of the presenters were practical systemic applications to improve the present system. The “blood and guts” of the traumatic, delay and denial, struggles of navigating in a crippled workers’ compensation system, in California and elsewhere, is verification that change is mandated.

As North Carolina attorney, Valerie A. Johnson, so eloquently remarked, “workers’ compensation is supposed to be a simple system.” The process has now been obstructed by encroaching elements of fault, contributory negligence, apportionment of pre-existing conditions and difficulties of the element of time, manifested by latent diseases unknown to the fathers of the system a century ago. The advance of medical science has brought forth new and innovated modalities that have contributed to soaring medical costs. The convergence of these issues has generated higher administrative costs.

Pecuniary Industry motives have worked adversely to improving safety in the workplace. The need for workers’ compensation would be minimized by adopting a safer occupational environment. Under reporting of workplace accidents continue as the Government Accountability Office announced. Nebraska Appleseed reveals that workers feel intimidated and are apprehensive to report injuries and unsafe work conditions. This is scenario is compounded by the fact that undocumented workers, who have even less job security, work in jobs with higher risk. The Bush Administration did not make efforts to allow OSHA to heighten enforcement efforts. All of these ingredients combine to create a recipe that just doesn’t work.

The US Senate advanced the health care legislation to a floor debate in an unusual late Saturday night session. This action may indeed provide an opportunity for the stakeholders in workers’ compensation to all join in the debate and look for solutions to the delivery of appropriate medical care in an efficient and timely fashion. To avoid “unintended consequences” yet again, injured workers and their advocates will need to be active participants and engage in the debate now.

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