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

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Senator Boxer calls US chemical facility safety “outrageous” and “unacceptable”

Today's post is shared from scienceblogs.com/

As last week’s Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing made abundantly clear, communities throughout the United States are at ongoing risk from potentially disastrous incidents involving hazardous chemicals. A new Congressional Research Service report released concurrently by Senator Edward J. Markey (D-MA), details how thousands of facilities across the country that store and use hazardous chemicals are located in communities, putting millions of Americans at risk. Yet this list of facilities, Senator Markey’s office points out, may not be complete. The report analyzes US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data on locations where at least one of 140 different extremely hazardous materials are stored. But this EPA list does not include the highly explosive substance ammonium nitrate – the chemical involved in the April 2013 West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion that killed 15 people and injured approximately 200.

What has happened – or more precisely, not happened – since that incident was the focus of the December 11th Senate hearing. The hearing, convened jointly with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was held to review progress made in implementing President Obama’s Executive Order 13650 issued in August 2013 in the wake of the West, Texas disaster.

“In the 602 days since the West, Texas tragedy there have been 355 chemical...
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Close Down All Second Injury Funds?

Today's post is shared from reduceyourworkerscomp.com/

Employers get little to no relief from state workers compensation second injury funds.  Many state second injury laws are weak, ill defined, are hard to penetrate, and may lack proper funding. Rules and regulations make it hard for a claim to be  acceptance by a second injury fund.

Funding programs for second injury funds vary greatly. Some are funded from insurance carrier premium assessments.  Others are funded from state budgets and legislative action.  Most funding programs may fail to meet the fund exposures or liabilities.  This means that even if a claim is accepted by a fund, the employer may not be able to recover their expended funds. The employer has to handle and pay the claim before seeking reimbursement from the second injury fund.

Second Injury Funds and rules became prevalent after World War II as a program to induce employers to hire handicapped veterans.   By then workers compensation law, legal precedent, and regulation had clearly established that the employer took the employee as is.  This meant any employee with an underlying pathology or disability, who sustained a compensable injury which aggravated or increased the overall heath or disability costs had to be borne by the employer.
The second injury fund program gave the employer relief from the expense of the aggravation or increased disability. The fund would take over the claim handling and cost after certain set periods of time...
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Cancer from asbestos caused by more than one cell mutation

Today's post is shared from sciencedaily.com/

Malignant mesothelioma is a rare form of cancer that affects the mesothelium -- the protective lining that covers the internal organs, such as the lungs, the heart and the abdominal cavity. It is estimated that malignant mesothelioma affects up to 3,200 people in the USA each year, most of whom die within a year of diagnosis. The primary cause of this cancer is exposure to asbestos, which used to be used in building construction. The inhalation of asbestos fibers causes inflammation that can cause mutations in cells even after 30-50 years of dormancy.

Most cancers are thought to be monoclonal, where all the cells in a tumor can be traced back to a mutation in a single cell. Researchers from University of Hawaii Cancer Center set out to investigate whether this was the case with malignant mesothelioma, or if it was polyclonal in which the tumor is the result of the growth of two or more mutant distinct cells.

During early development of the female embryo one of the two X chromosomes becomes inactivated and this inactivation is passed on to all subsequent cells. By tracing this inactivated X using a process called HUMARA assay it is possible to determine whether or not a cancer is monoclonal.

In this study, 16 samples from 14 tumor biopsies from women with mesothelioma had a HUMARA assay performed on them. These were compared to control DNA samples from a healthy male and female, and a known monoclonal cell line. The samples provided insight into the origin of...
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Jon L. Gelman of Wayne NJ is the author of NJ Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters) and co-author of the national treatise, Modern Workers’ Compensation Law (West-Thompson-Reuters). For over 4 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 occupational accidents and illnesses.
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From the E.R. to the Courtroom: How Nonprofit Hospitals Are Seizing Patients’ Wages


 
Northwest Financial Services first sued Keith and Katie Herie when they couldn't afford the $14,000 bill for Katie's emergency appendectomy. Since 2006, the Heries have had almost $20,000 taken from their wages to repay medical bills and still owe at least $26,000, with interest mounting. (Steve Hebert for ProPublica)
This story was co-published with NPR and is shared from .propublica.org/

On the eastern edge of St. Joseph, Missouri, lies the small city's only hospital, a landmark of brick and glass. Music from a player piano greets visitors at the main entrance, and inside, the bright hallways seem endless. Long known as Heartland Regional Medical Center, the nonprofit hospital and its system of clinics recently rebranded. Now they're called Mosaic Life Care, because, their promotional materials say: "We offer much more than health care. We offer life care."

Two miles away, at the rear of a low-slung building is a key piece of Mosaic—Heartland's very own for-profit debt collection agency.

When patients receive care at Heartland and don't or can't pay, their bills often end up here at Northwest Financial Services. And if those patients don't meet Northwest's demands, their debts can make another, final stop: the Buchanan County Courthouse.

From 2009 through 2013, Northwest filed more than 11,000 lawsuits. When it secured a judgment, as it typically did, Northwest was entitled to seize a hefty portion of a debtor's paycheck. During those years, the company garnished the pay of about 6,000...
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Saturday, December 20, 2014

Injured North Providence school custodian wins workers’ comp lawsuit against town

Today's post is shared from providencejournal.com/

A North Providence school custodian recently won a workers’ compensation lawsuit against the town.

Joseph J. Adamczyk, who worked at Wayland Elementary School, in North Providence, injured his right shoulder on Aug. 21, 2013 while lifting a chest-high recycling bin filled with old books and being hit by the bin, court documents read. By mid-November of that year, he could no longer work.

Prior to that, he earned an average weekly paycheck of $683.26.

A physician later determined Adamczyk had an anterior/inferior labral tear. He had surgery for the injury in September 2014.

Judge Dianne M. Connor ruled on Dec. 12 that the town pay Adamczyk workers’ compensation benefits — partially disabled for some months and fully for other months –from November 2013 and continuing.

The judge also ordered the town reimburse the Rhode Island Temporary Disability Insurance Fund; pay Adamczyk for his medical treatment, rehabilitation costs, wages he may have earned from another employer while he was injured, and various court costs.
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Ebola Guidelines for the Workers’ Comp Industry

Today's post is shared rom genexservices.com/

The guidelines, “Hemorrhagic Fever Viruses: Ebola and Marburg,” go beyond clinical directives provided by WHO, the CDC or Official Disability Guidelines to provide the much-needed guidance employers and carriers need from a workers’ compensation perspective. “GENEX developed the guidelines at the requests of both internal and external providers and nurse case managers looking for workers’ comp-specific treatment protocols to treat Ebola,” said Dr. Maury Guzick, GENEX branch manager and physician advisor.

“In the workers’ comp field, there are significant risks to health care workers, emergency responders, laboratory and airline staff, among others,” said Guzick. “These workers are more likely to come into contact with an infected person or their bodily fluids. With so many workers at risk, it’s critical that guidelines are developed and made available to help treat infected workers and prevent the spread of diseases such as Ebola and Marburg throughout the U.S. workforce."

Ebola and Marburg are rare RNA filoviruses that cause severe hemorrhagic fever. The viruses are highly contagious, but only through direct contact with an infected person. After the Ebola infection invades the body, it replicates quickly causing vomiting, diarrhea and rash, and can also lead to both external and internal bleeding. As the virus spreads, it can lead to...
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TRIA Non-Renewal: No Loss to Workers

Todays guest post is shared from workcompwire.com and is authored by Peter Rousmaniere.

The failure to renew the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) – first enacted in 2002, renewed in 2005 and 2007 – raises two questions: Who would have benefited from renewal, and who is harmed by non-renewal, with regards to workers’ compensation?

Workers did not benefit from TRIA. They may benefit from its non-renewal. For them, TRIA was useless.

For workers’ compensation insurers, TRIA simplified their management of risk and now they have to work harder. TRIA was, when you peel away the onion, about insurers taking care of their markets. Every other consideration appears to be secondary.

The impact of non-renewal on employers is ambiguous. Their risk management is now trickier, but they may come to see how poor a deal the federal backstop was for their employees.

TRIA mandated no expansion, clarification or revision of state workers’ compensation statutes, in coverage and process. After claim payers incurred a specified threshold of losses, the Federal Government was to begin to help fund further losses. (This is a very simplified but I think fair summary.)

Throughout the history of statute, including the legislative debates and published studies, few, if any, took the time to ask some fundamental questions:
What nature of conditions could arise from a terrorist attack?
Do workers’ compensation statutes cover these conditions?
For conditions that are covered, is there a reasonable chance that affected workers will obtain adequate benefits?
...
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