Archive for the ‘workers compensation insurance’ Category

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Press Release: Disabled Workers Fleeing Job Market

April 13th, 2011 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in medical insurance, workers compensation insurance, world events

Senator Tom D. Harkin (D-Iowa) issued a press release yesterday morning, about the status of disabled employees in the American workplace.

Because we feel this issue is important, we are running the full text of the release:

WASHINGTON, April 12 — The office of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, issued the following news release:

This morning, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) gave the keynote address at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Corporate Disability Employment Summit. A longtime champion for people with disabilities, Harkin sponsored the Americans with Disabilities Act, and as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, he recently held a hearing to identify barriers to employment for people with intellectual disabilities and strategies that have successfully improved employment opportunities. Today, he sounded the alarm on a disturbing trend: more than two thirds of Americans with disabilities are without a job, and adults with disabilities are leaving the labor force during this recession at more than 10 times the rate of adults without disabilities. Harkin called on the CEOs and business owners in the audience to join him in his goal of increasing the number of disabled Americans in the workforce from 4.9 million today to 6 million in 2015.

“As we enter into the third decade of implementation of the ADA, my central priority is improving employment opportunities and outcomes for people with disabilities. The ADA and the special education laws have combined to produce the best-educated population of people with disabilities in U.S. history. And yet, while the majority of them would like to be working, the shocking fact is that more than two thirds of Americans with disabilities are without a job. In fact, now that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting regularly on the employment situation for people with disabilities, we have strong evidence that it has gotten disproportionately worse for workers with disabilities in the last two years. According to BLS data, between March of 2009 and March of this year, the size of the disability workforce shrunk by 395,000 workers to about 4.9 million workers,” Harkin said in his remarks.

“When this drop is compared with broader labor force trends, you can see that more than one in three American adults who have left the labor force in the last two years have been people with disabilities. That means that, during this recession, adults with disabilities have been leaving the labor force at a rate more than 10 times the rate of adults without disabilities. This disturbing trend line has not received much attention from policymakers or the public. We need to recognize that it has a huge budgetary and social cost. For example, it has been accompanied by increases in applications for Social Security Disability Insurance benefits, which have grown from an average of 200,000 new applications per month at the beginning of 2008 to an average of close to 250,000 per month by the end of 2010.

“If we work together, I believe we can set a realistic goal of increasing the number of adults with disabilities participating in the labor force from 4.9 million, today, to 6 million by 2015. Expanding the disability workforce by more than one million workers in four years is achievable if we get serious about making it happen.I want your ideas and I am asking for your collaboration so that our policies are producing real results on the ground–real results that become jobs for people with disabilities and a strong, talented and loyal workforce for businesses. If there are federal policies that are getting in the way of your efforts, I want to hear about those too so we can do something about them. Making a real impact on disability employment numbers is one of my top priorities and will remain so as long as I am in the Senate.”

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Kansas Shows Decline in Workplace Injuries

March 23rd, 2011 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in workers compensation insurance

Good news from the world of worker’s compensation insurance: labor officials in Kansas say non-fatal workplace were 12 percent lower than average in 2009, the most recent year for which statistics have been compiled.

The Department of Labor says the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses showed that the state’s rate of non-fatal workplace injuries was 4.1 cases per 100 full-time workers in that year, down from 4.5 cases per 100 the year before.

The sharpest drop, the survey says, was in the construction industry, which saw a decline of non-fatal injuries of 29 percent between 2008 and 2009.

The data from the survey also says that 26.1 percent of all injured and ill workers were between the ages of 45 and 54, while those aged from 35 to 44 represented 24.9 percent of total non-fatal workplace illnesses and injuries.

Karin Brownlee, the Kansas Labor Secretary, says the new data is encouraging.

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Workers’ Comp In Illinois: No Lawyer Required

February 17th, 2011 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in workers compensation insurance

Want to hear something scary? Workers in Illinois have received thousands of tax-free dollars in workers’ compensation with what amounts to a doctor’s note.

According to a report in the Belleville News-Democrat, cases that have involved wrist or elbow issues with municipal and private workers have been resolved without the affected worker needing surgery, treatment, or even legal representation.

Information from the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission database reveals that 95% of 3,500 private and public workers outside the city of Chicago who chose not to hire lawyers received settlements in 2010 without any of the usual administration process – a process which takes weeks or months everywhere else in the country.

The database did not list awards by any of the fifteen arbitrators based in Chicago.

According to the commissions chairperson, going forward uncontested claims will not be approved until after they’ve been assigned a case number, logged into the database, and subjected to public review.

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Oregon Has Lowest Workers’ Comp Year Ever, Still Above National Average

February 9th, 2011 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in insurance news, workers compensation insurance

Great news for workers’ compensation administrators in Oregon: private sector work-related injuries and illnesses there were only 4.4 per 100 full-time employees during the 2009 calendar year, making it the lowest recorded total ever.

Oregonians files 48,304 work related injury cases in 2009, 52.6 percent of which resulted in lost work time (including days away from work, restricted hours/duties, or transfers), according to the 2010 Report on the Oregon Workers’ Compensation System.

The report, which is published annually by the Department of Consumer and Business Services (DCBS) , found that the DART rate (days away from work, restriction, or job transfer) was 2.3 for private sector cases in 2009, as compared to a rate of 1.9 for state government and 2.8 for local government workers. Overall, the public sector DART rate was 2.5. The highest DART rate among specific industry divisions was recorded by transportation and warehousing, with a rare of 4.8, while finance and insurance came in with the lowest rate of 0.1.

Because the state of Oregon has a higher-than-average proportion of its workforce in industries considered “hazardous” – at least according to the DCBS – Oregon’s total incidence rate of workers’ compensation cases exceeds the national rate by 22.2 percent, and the state’s DART rate is 27.8 percent above the national average. The number of illnesses and injuries reported in any given year are influenced by a variety of factors, including working conditions, worker experience and training, the state of the economy and the number of hours worked.

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Montana: Save Money by Refusing Workers’ Comp to Illegal Immigrants

January 11th, 2011 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in insurance news, workers compensation insurance

A lawmaker in Montana has proposed a way to reduce the cost of state workers’ compensation insurance. He wants to prohibit illegal immigrants from collecting benefits when they’re injured.

Representative Gordon Vance (R – Bozeman) has sponsored House Bill 71, which would require workers’ compensation insurers to to create verification systems allowing them to determine whether or not injured employees are illegal immigrants, to ensure that no medical or wage-loss benefits are paid to undocumented workers. Exceptions would be made for immigrants who were lawfully admitted for permanent residence at the time of their injuries, were lawfully present for performing the duties that resulted in the work-related disease or injury, or were permanently residing in the United States under color of law at the time the work-related injury-causing services were performed.

House Bill 71, sponsored by Rep. Gordon Vance, R-Bozeman, would require a workers’ comp insurer to develop a verification process to determine if an injured employee is an illegal immigrant to ensure that no wage-loss or medical benefits for work-related injuries be paid to aliens. The exception, according to the bill text, is that benefits could be paid to an alien if he or she is an individual who was lawfully admitted for permanent residence at the time the injury occurred, was lawfully present for the purposes of performing the services that resulted in the work-related injury or disease, or was permanently residing in the United States under color of law at the time the services that resulted in the work-related injury or disease were performed.

According to the Great Falls Tribune opponents of the bill feel that it could cause employers to purposefully hire illegal immigrants to get around paying workers’ comp, and that it could lead to lawsuits of whether or not the state has the right to determine who is or is not eligible for workers’ comp benefits, as well as lawsuits from injured parties who have no other way to be compensated for their work-related injuries.

At $3.33 per $100 of payroll (according to a summary conduced by the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services), Montana has the highest workers’ compensation costs in the country.

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Oklahoma Representative Pushes for Workers’ Comp Reform

December 27th, 2010 by Iris | 1 Comment | Filed in insurance news, insurance specialists, workers compensation insurance

Oklahoma state representative, Mark McCullough told the press last week that he was prepared to introduce legislation designed to improve his state’s workers’ compensation system. Representative McCullough also said that the legislation will be based on recent recommendations from The Task Force on Vocational Rehabilitation in Workers’ Compensation, including reforms that would return employees to work whenever possible, as a way to both control costs and reduce litigation.

In addition, the group recommended that vocational rehabilitation should begin much earlier than is currently required, and that medical guidelines that are evidence-based should be implemented in order to identify and confirm workplace injuries.

McCullough, an attorney, served as chair of the task force, which put the workers’ compensation system and the issue of vocational rehabilitation under review. In their report, the task force observed, “Vocational rehabilitation through our system is utilized infrequently, rarely successfully places an injured worker in a difference occupation, is not attractive to the injured worker for a variety of reasons, occurs much too late in the case timeline and is perhaps cynically used to settle a claim for a higher dollar amount with no real belief by either part that the funds will actually be used for the purposes of vocational rehabilitation.”

McCullough said that his legislation would include reforms to begin vocational rehabilitation before Maximum Medical Improvement (MMI) in some cases, and may involve having a physician’s advisory council draft at set of fact-specific injuries to serve as a “trigger” for cases where earlier vocational rehabilitation may be advisable.

In addition, the legislation will also contain provisions from a bill McCullough originally filed last year. That bill, which was a product of a working group sponsored by The State Chamber, would turn Oklahoma’s Workers’ Compensation system into an administrative system, which all states except Oklahoma and Nebraska have already embraced.

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Five Bizarre Insurance Claims (That We SWEAR We Didn’t Make Up)

October 28th, 2010 by Iris | Comments Off | Filed in insurance facts, insurance news, insurance specialists, workers compensation insurance

Okay, we know that people sometimes make insurance claims for some truly bizarre reasons, but these are more bizarre than most. Since this is Halloween week, we’ve decided to share them with you:

  1. Shooting a Monkey: There’s no doubt that law enforcement work is a high-stress job, but even police officers can take emotional duress claims beyond what most people would consider reasonable. Officer Frank Chiafari made such a claim after a case that involved a chimpanzee that had gone on a rampage, leaving at least one person with serious injuries. When the chimp attempted to get hinto his car, he shot it. He later filed a workers compensation insurance claim because of the stress caused by the situation, but was denied because he hadn’t shot an actual human being.
  2. Nose Broken While Gawking: Okay, we know that Greece is a popular destination for bikini clad tourists, especially in summer, but check this out: while on vacation in Athens, a man was so distracted by ogling a group of nubile young women in bathing suits that he walked into a bust stop shelter, hitting it so hard that he broke his nose. He went to the hospital, and yes, his insurance company did pay for it.
  3. Half-Baked Hair:A man vacationing with his daughter filed a claim with his travel insurance company for the cost of the girl’s haircut. She had, he claimed, singed her hair in the oven, making the new do a necessity, but the do was apparently a serious don’t. The insurance company didn’t agree with his notion that they should pay for the cut. Maybe he should have tried suing the oven manufacturer instead?
  4. Sinking Your Teeth Into It: A man on a cruise found out the hard way just how bad seasickness can be when his dentures went overboard while the ship was in rough waters in the Bay of Biscay. He had leaned over the side to void his upset stomach, and his false teeth went along for the ride. Fortunately, his travel insurance company agreed that that the diving dentures counted as “lost luggage.”
  5. Alien Abduction: While most of us believe that alien abduction is limited to television and movies, there’s actually a thriving market for alien abduction insurance. One company offering such coverage is Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson (GRIP). This London-based insurer specializes in odd kinds of coverage, including both alien abduction insurance and immaculate conception insurance. GRIP even paid out a million-pound claim to a client who claimed he’d been abducted. (We won’t comment on the fact that he’s a business partner on GRIP’s managing director.)

To think we once thought it weird that online doctor visits were covered by insurance. By comparison, that’s perfectly normal.

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