At the risk of professional self-decapitation, let me commit some heresy: workers' compensation today is largely irrelevant.
I make the above statement as:
- An employer subject to an ever-increasing multitude of employment rules, regulations, statutes and court rulings that promulgate increased expense and continually fail to deliver to workers efficient, timely services and benefits.
- An attorney who has personally witnessed the failure of workers' comp to deliver on its promises of expedient medical treatment and income protection for employees without protracted litigation.
- An industry publisher who is witnessing a system that no longer provides value to either employers or employees, and instead is used for profiteering by numerous peripheral vendors.
In addition, we now have a national medical care reform agenda that I think will profoundly alter the medical component of workers' comp and, in my opinion, further devalue workers' comp to employers and employees.
Workers' comp and medical insurance grew up as independent systems, not because of efficiency or expediency, but because both were revolutionary in their origins and addressed problems brought about by the rapid industrialization of America.
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