By HOWARD FINE
Even as California employers are enjoying sharp reductions in their workers’ compensation premiums, efforts are now under way in Sacramento to undo substantial portions of the reforms that generated those savings.
Trial attorneys, labor unions and workers’ compensation doctors are mounting an all-out push to increase benefit payouts to injured workers and boost fees for physicians.
Three voter initiatives that would make drastic changes to the workers’ compensation system have been submitted to the state Attorney General’s Office.
All three would raise benefits to injured workers and give them more power to choose their doctors. But two of the measures go much further: they would effectively scrap the entire system by allowing injured workers to sue their employers.
The initiatives were submitted by a registered voter who cannot be located, and all of the traditional interest groups now pushing for reform deny they had any role in drafting the measures.
As a result, business groups and Republican lawmakers are now on the defensive, trying to keep the major reforms enacted two years ago from being undermined, either in the Legislature or at the ballot box.
Last week, a coalition of business groups formed a committee to oppose any workers’ compensation ballot initiative.
These business groups credit the 2004 reforms and a set of changes enacted in 2002 with bringing workers’ compensation premiums down an average of 38 percent from their 2003 highs.
Any attempt to reopen these reforms, they say, could send premiums right back up again.
Instead, they would rather see some minor administrative tweaking of some of the benefit payout formulas to take care of the most egregious cases of slashed payouts.
For more on this story see the Feb. 6 edition of the Business Journal. Fine is a staff reporter with the Los Angeles Business Journal.
