By now, most of you have probably read the feature report published by ProPublica on "The Demolition of Workers' Comp." This well-written package touched on some very important issues faced by our industry. For example, caps to the wage replacement benefits provided under workers' compensation can result in a devastating financial loss for higher wage-earning employees. Additionally, there is wide variation in the total loss of use benefits provided under the various state systems. Legislators around the nation and people in the workers' compensation industry would do well to carefully consider some of the issues raised by ProPublica.
As someone who has been in the workers' compensation industry for over 25 years, I also found there were several shortcomings in the ProPublica feature. For example, its authors failed to touch on what is often the biggest reason behind an injured workers' poor recovery, and that is the secondary gain motivation of unscrupulous medical providers and attorneys.
I remember years ago when I first started handling claims, Texas had the worst workers' compensation system in the nation. Plaintiff attorneys would refer injured workers to physicians who had been sued so many times that they had lost privileges at every hospital in the state. But that didn't discourage these physicians, who had set up operating rooms in their offices and continued ruining the lives of so many injured workers.
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