July Marks Start of New Workers' Comp Laws Across U.S.

                               

Sarasota, FL (WorkersCompensation.com) - A slate of new state laws regarding workers’ compensation became effective earlier this month across the country. 

July 1, routinely one of the effective dates for new state laws, saw some states taking steps to trim workers’ compensation benefits, while others took legislative action favorable to workers.

According to Alan Pierce, a workers’ compensation claimant attorney and immediate past president of the Workers’ Injury Law & Advocacy Group, a nonprofit organization representing the interests of injured workers and their families, concerns about economic impacts are at the forefront of changes to states’ workers’ compensation laws that are averse to workers.

Many states, in order to deal with escalating costs of workers’ compensation programs — usually medical costs — have opted to cut, or slash, employee benefits, Pierce wrote in an email to WorkersCompensation.com.

“We have seen almost no expansion of benefits,” Pierce wrote. “And for the most part the business and insurance communities have had much more legislative clout than they did a generation ago.”

Iowa is one example. According to the Des Moines Register, a new workers’ compensation law “cuts workers’ compensation benefits within the framework of a legislative debate focused on economic development, pitting concerns about the state’s business climate against the interests of injured workers.”

Among the provisions of the law, available on this legislative website, is a change in the compensation protocol for permanent partial disability.

Previously, Iowa had allowed that compensation to begin “at the termination of the healing period.” Under the new law, that compensation can begin “when it is medically indicated that maximum medical improvement from the injury has been reached and that the extent of loss or percentage of permanent impairment can be determined by use of the guides to the evaluation of permanent impairment, published by the American Medical Association…”

On the other side of the legislative divide, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper last month signed the Uninsured Employer Act. The new law allows Colorado’s Division of Workers’ Compensation to create an Uninsured Employers Fund to provide financial assistance to workers hurt on the job whose employers don’t carry workers’ compensation insurance. Similar funds are already in place in a number of other states.

Under the new law, employers without insurance will continue to face state fines in connection with workplace injuries, but those dollars will be steered toward injured workers rather than the state’s general fund.

Paul Tauriello, director of the Colorado Division of Workers’ Compensation, explained to WorkersCompensation.com via email that in addition to revenue from fines, the fund will include revenue from charges against insurers in connection with fatal injuries when the person who dies has no dependents.

According to Tauriello, for the immediate future, the fund will be building revenue, and won’t be open for claims until January 2020. Based on current revenue trends for penalty payments, Tauriello said, the fund is expected to have a balance of “about $1 million” by that time.

Elsewhere around the country:

 

  • In Florida, a new law aimed at standardizing the state’s patchwork of local regulation of ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft classifies most drivers as independent contractors, meaning they won’t be covered by the state’s workers’ compensation law.
  • In Virginia, a new law allows the state Workers’ Compensation Commission to require employers to provide funds for an injured employee to purchase a vehicle equipped to accommodate any special needs. The law applies in cases in which the modifications are deemed medically necessary and would cost more than a replacement vehicle.
  • In Wyoming, lawmakers approved legislation allowing employers delinquent on workers’ compensation payments to enter into installment payment agreements.
  • Other legislative action around the country related to workers’ compensation focused on emergency services personnel.
  • In Tennessee, new legislation increases compensation paid to the estate of a firefighter, law enforcement officer or volunteer rescue squad member who dies in the line of duty from $25,000 to $250,000. Under the legislation, the $250,000 is to be paid through an annuity, in five yearly installments of $250,000.

And although it doesn’t become effective until Jan. 1, 2018, a new Georgia law takes an innovative approach to compensating some emergency workers.

The Georgia State Firefighters Association, working with the Association County Commissioners of Georgia, the Georgia Municipal Association and state Rep. Micah Gravley (R-Douglasville), developed legislation using traditional insurance, rather than workers’ compensation, to assist firefighters dealing with a work-related cancer diagnosis.

Broadly, the legislation requires local governments to provide cancer insurance for firefighters covering specific forms of the disease — bladder, blood, brain, breast, cervical, esophageal, intestinal, kidney, lymphatic, lung, prostate, rectum, respiratory tract, skin, testicular, and thyroid cancer; leukemia; multiple myeloma; or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

According to Moultrie Fire Department Capt. Joey Hartley, president of the firefighters association, studies by Johns Hopkins University following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States have linked those cancers to firefighting and other emergency service work.

Regarding workers’ compensation for emergency workers, Pierce wrote that if there is, in fact, a trend toward addressing their needs, it is primarily oriented toward post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“Some states treat mental injuries as they do physical injuries, but this is a small minority, if any,” Pierce indicated in his email. “Some states do not allow recovery for mental injuries at all unless there is also a physical injury. It is in these jurisdictions that first-responder bills are being filed.”

Pierce went on to say that, given the recent history of terror attacks, “expanding recovery to first responders is more politically ‘do-able’ than expanding other workers’ compensation benefits, and the overall costs to the employers’ involved, public or private, is quite small.”

Workers' compensation is a frequent focus of attention for state legislatures. According to Katie Quinn, a research analyst with the National Council of State Legislatures, an NCSL study covering the years 2010-2014 showed that in those years, between 35 and 40 states annually enacted workers' compensation legislation.  


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