Orlando, Fla.–Workers' compensation professionals need to examine ways to improve the workers' compensation system and ensure that even the most seriously injured return to work quickly, the president of Wausau Insurance said today.
Joseph Gilles, also chief operating officer of Wausau, made his points at the opening session of the 60th Annual Workers' Compensation Educational Conference here, sponsored by The National Underwriter Company and the Florida Workers' Compensation Institute Inc., with a variety of data showing how the system has changed since his company issued the first comp insurance policy in 1911.
He noted that the system, initially begun as a social experiment, had goals that included replacing a share of lost income, covering "related" injury medical costs, and operating efficiently with easy to understand benefits that included incentives to get employees back to work.
Ninety-four years later, he explained, the system has an increasing percentage of employees who never return to work and it commonly pays for drugs such as Viagra. The system also can see claims such as a sprained knee in a bookstore morph into 30 years of nursing home care for a diabetic.
He mentioned skyrocketing medical costs that have outpaced lost-time indemnity costs and asked the audience to consider a number of questions. Among them: Is too much worker income replaced?
"How do you retire from an injury?" he asked. "We didn't have that problem in 1911."
Mr. Gilles said the workers' comp system was not designed to handle harm to workers by terrorist acts. While insurers can help protect them from terrorism, the system should be protected from going bankrupt. "We need a war terrorism act," he said.
While workers' comp insurance has gone down for employers, Mr. Gilles said that since the early 90′s the average cost for a person out of work has increased.
"People are not returning as fast as they once did," he noted.
"We're in a business with a mission with meaning to a lot of people," he noted and told an anecdote illustrating how a seriously injured worker could be brought back to productivity.
The case Mr. Gilles related involved a successful executive who suffered injuries in a work-related driving accident that turned him into a quadriplegic. Four days after the accident his supervisor arrived at the hospital and asked him, "When are you coming back to work?" He answered the man's protestations about his condition by asking, "Doesn't your brain work?"
Six months later, Mr. Gilles said, the man was back to work in a wheelchair and continued his career despite limited use of his hands. "This is the beauty of the system," he declared, adding, "I'm here to challenge you to help us make the system last another 94 years."
"We need to remember the principles of workers' compensation: Replace income. Don't tell people to retire. Get people back to work," he advised.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.