New workers’ compensation reforms being processed in Juneau could affect the benefits that you would receive as a result of being injured at work. Workers’ Compensation was created as a way to protect employees that are injured on the job. It ensures a fixed monetary reward cutting out costly litigation for both employer and employee.

     That may change.

     Governor Frank Murkowski has introduced Senate bill 130 and House bill 180 to eliminate the astronomical expense of work comp insurance for employers. According to Gary O’Claray, Commissioner for the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, “Alaska’s worker’s compensation system is broken, and we all have to pitch in to fix it, if we want to keep Alaskans working.”

     It has become too expensive for many employers to carry the insurance so many of them opt to break the law and forego it, rather than close their doors entirely. Murkowski maintains that, in the past two years alone, there has been a 36 percent increase in rates.

     Reform could be a good thing as long as the big picture is considered. The proposals on these bills – according to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development – are as follows:

- Capping medical fees paid for injured worker services at the December 1999 level and calling for a medical review commission to study the medical delivery system for work comp and report to the labor commissioner by March 1, 2007.

- Helping employers reduce medical costs by authorizing them to use a list of preferred providers and allowing employers to negotiate fee rate, while still letting employees choose providers outside the preferred list.

- Adopting national peer-reviewed medical treatment guidelines.

- Requiring physicians to use generic drugs – but allowing exemptions for medical reasons – and authorizing use of a preferred drug list.

- Establishing an Appeals Commission to provide quicker, more consistent decisions of appeals that the Superior Court offers under current law.

- Preventing workers form receiving more in combined disability benefits than they would earn on the job.

- Streamlining the claim settling process by allowing parties to settle claims without requiring Workers’ Compensation board approval, letting claimants opt for cash benefits instead of retraining benefits and reducing delays in determining eligibility for retraining benefits.

- Protecting workers against unscrupulous employers who fail to carry insurance coverage, by using fines collected from such violators to fund a pool to pay benefits to workers left uncovered.

- Helping injured workers return to productive work more quickly.

     These reforms have raised some questions. For instance, allowing employers to choose which physicians the employee may see only stacks the deck. What will prevent large corporations from padding the pockets of these few select doctors to get results that would be in their favor?

     The Hippocratic Oath is devalued when doctors push drugs to get money from drug companies and deny seniors treatment because they carry Medicare. Will this prevent the greed that seems prevalent in the health care industry?

     Why aren’t medical treatment guidelines being peer reviewed regularly? This suggests that substandard care is the norm. Peer review would improve the overall system, not just workers compensation patients.

     Cutting what employees would receive in combined disability benefits earned if they were on the job doesn’t take into consideration any raises that they could have received if they were on the job, nor retirement plans or medical benefits that are no longer available to them – whether it be dental, vision or medical. How many of these people now rely on public assistance to get treatment? How expensive is that to the state? Allowing employees to choose cash settlements rather than retaining benefits is not going to help them return to productive work sooner. Just like the absurd privatized social security plan proposed by President Bush, this will only ensure that the cash gets pumped into the economy now rather than saved for a medical expense that could come up a year from now. Most Americans find themselves in debt by the time they are 25, and already have a difficult time setting money aside for a rainy day.

     Our state legislators need to think long and hard before they accept blindly what has been set before them. All the information out there shows how this is going to benefit employers but there is little talk about how this will affect employees, the people that keep businesses going. Employees won’t be the only ones that are hurt; everyone that goes to a doctor’s office can expect higher fees for treatment because physicians will have to recover what they’ve lost by agreeing to a fee cap on work comp patients. Insurance holders, people without, and everyone in between can expect to pay more for their 10 minutes with the doctor. 

     People who are currently dealing with work comp should have a voice in the changes that are being made. Murkowski slipped this one in on us; it didn’t hit popular news sources until it was going in for approval. Creating more bureaucracy does not necessarily create a reformed system; it only creates more paperwork and more hoops to jump through for all parties involved. 

     More research is required, and not just in Juneau. If you are interested in the outcome of this reform I urge you to contact our state legislators and governor and question what is really behind this reform.