Seen in Insurance Journal:
Mastropietro, chairman of the state’s Workers Compensation Commission, suggested that revisions passed in 1993 after what he termed a “bloodbath” between business and labor were good for businesses and have led to lower, more predictable costs for employers and the system. The changes included a one-third cut in benefits for injured workers.
Since then, labor has largely been frustrated in its efforts to rollback the 1993 cuts. But now, Mastropietro suggested, the political climate is changing and most of the bills to restore benefits that lawmakers have rejected have been gradually winning more support over the past five years.
The article cites a change in law requiring comp benefits to be offset by Social Security payments as evidence of political climate shift (although, the five-year delay between date of injury and the start of SSDI benefits in my wife’s case has me wondering how significant a change that really is….).
Also cited is a measure that came up that would have extended the number of weeks that benefits can be collected for partial permanent disabilities.
I can understand legislators’ desire to help folks injured on the job, but it also seems prudent to wonder if those same legislators’ consider the potential fallout of some of the measures they’ve apparently been considering.
