According to June 5 article reported in ‘The Californian’,
Workers comp reforms still need some work. Some serious work, it appears.
While even many skeptics have to admit that the reforms the “The Governator” achieved several years ago did indeed accomplish some good, fundamnetal cost reductions for California based firms, it is time to really analyze whether
or not these particular reforms are unfairly punishing injured employees and whether or not they are really fulfill their alleged aim to employers as well.
To give Arnie credit where credit is due, several years ago California’s rates were a whopping two times the national average, and high workers’ comp rates were simply dragging down virtually every firm (except for medical and legal ones).
Along with several other provisions, these particular reforms restricted an employee’s choice of physicians to those on an employer-mandated list and also, significantly, scaled back the number of visits, standardized benefits for each category of injuries to eliminate arbitrary reimbursement rates which were rampant
and also established a review panel which was meant to limit litigation levels.
And yet, paradoxically, these apparently well-meaning reforms may have tipped the scales too much in favor of the insurers at the relative expense of workers & employers. Even though California’s employers are paying less to insure their employees than they were initially, employers’ costs are still more than forty percent higher than the $2.30 per $100 in payroll they
were paying in 2000! As a matter of fact, California is still among the ten most expensive states for workers’ comp.
Adding insult to injury, (pun intended) payouts for severe injuries like losing a limb or an eye while working are very far below the national average.
All in all, workers compesation is still costing California’s employers more than the competitors in other states and yet all the while compensating injured employees less than elsewhere. Ouch, that hurts.
This sounds like a system that, despite various improvements several years ago, still is not really working too great for either the employers or their employees.
According to a recent news story reported in the San Diego Tribune, California’s workers’ compensation reform once again is really hitting the small guy, even including those brave individuals who are entrusted to protect and serve.
The newspaper story focused on the case of California Highway Patrol officer Gary Hoag’s major struggle to obtain physical therapy for his injured left leg, medical care for his other leg as well as psychological counseling. Lawmakers are finally beginning to take note of this gaping disparity, with bills being introduced which expand benefits to employees.
But for the aforementioned Trooper, he is still trying to extend his needed health treatment.
Since a series of changes to the workers’ comp system in 2003 and 2004, the state has severely restriced payments to injured employees, says the news report. Even with the changes, the golden state retains some of the nation’s steepest workers’ comp. insurance premiums while doling out the smallest amount in workers’ comp. benefits to injured employees, ranking even behind various states like Mississippi and Iowa which have radically lower costs of living
than does the big state.
It was also mentioned that about two years ago, the insurers had a fifty percent profit margin on their premiums in California!
If you are in need of legal representation yourself then by all means visit Los Angeles personal injury attorneys
According to reputable and respected journalists George Avalos and Barbara E. Hernandez of the MEDIANEWS network, a two-year-old bill is about to become due for the San Francisco Bay Area as well as the rest of California in the form of job losses which have been triggered by the rather steep in the housing market, a recent forecast states.
Experience points to a lag time of two years between a peak in home-building activity and a pronounced slowdown, or even job losses, for industries whose fortunes are linked to the housing market, according to researchers with the UCLA Anderson Forecast. The economists studied four cycles involving housing slumps and the after-effects on the job market.
Job losses connected to the housing bust have already begun to come to the fore in some areas like the East Bay. Even more troubling is the fact that the early indicators seem to suggest that the Alameda-Contra Costa region is being hit quite a bit harder than the state of California, broadly speaking.
Over the past year, the East Bay has lost some eighteen hundred or so jobs in the normally robust construction sector. This is a decline of almost three percent.
In the meantime, San Joaquin County has lost about eight hundred construction jobs, which is a reduction of just under five percent. And in the state as a whole, construction jobs have shrunk by some .7 percent during the year which ended in May.
And yet, the East Bay all by itself has been the hapless recipient of more than a quarter of all the construction positions which have been lost in the Golden State over that same time frame. More specifics at The SI Blog
In particular, 1,200 positions have been lost in the credit intermediation industry, which also includes many high paying positions for both loan officers and mortgage agents.
University analysts have predicted that the slump in house sales may be finally beginning to abate in the state. Prices are staying flat in certain individual markets.”Price appreciation has settled in around zero for the Bay Area,” one analyst recently wrote.
In spring or summer 2005, building permits in California hit a peak and then began to slide, stated Ryan Ratcliff, an respected economist from the University of California.
“Two years later is right now,” Ratcliff stated
Time to get blogging:
As reported by leading journalist Bill Cavala, Southern California voters are being asked to decide the fate of a very fragile ecosystem…
In essence they are voting on whether or not to protect the ecology of the San Joaquin Delta.
In fact, this Delta is basically the toll gate through which water has to pass to get to Los Angeles.
The toll necessary is simply Delta Protection. Allow the circumvention of the toll gate and the North loses the wherewithal to protect the Delta. That’s the politics of the issue,
and it essentially boils down to Northern California verses Sourthern. Yes, North vs. South.
The question is whether or not the South (and by extension Los Angeles & San Diego) can be trusted with the protection of the interests of the North without
any leverage whatsoever. In Northern California that answer was a major ‘no’, states Cavala. A big-time ‘no’ that was
so nearly unanimous as to represent an intensity rarely before, if ever, seen on any such issue in the Golden State.
The Delta is reclaimed swampland of course. It is reclaimed with dikes and also levies that were constructed years ago. Seasonal Tidal patterns may sometimes threaten the levies and, if they go, the Delta becomes
again a swamp filled with water which is much too salty to use for any kind of farming purposes.
At this time, California diverts water from the Sacramento and also the American Rivers after it has gone through the San Joaquin delta. It is pumped into a reservoir, and only then sent South in the California aqueduct. It is a system which works, and yet it is loaded with many potential and current issues.
