CAAA: OMG!

Wednesday, December 7, 2022 | 0

In 2022, the rate employers paid for workers’ compensation insurance was the same rate they paid in 1996.

One might think they would be celebrating instead of whining, but they continue to whine just the same.

The billions employers have saved and insurance companies have made since the passage of SB 863 isn’t enough. So they are also making up a “cost-crisis," a classic OMG!

After World War II, California created the Subsequent Injury Benefit Trust Fund to ease the challenge on good employers who were willing to take a risk by hiring someone who had been injured.

A previously injured worker was and is prone to a second injury. So the Subsequent Injury Benefit Trust Fund was created to spread the risk of hiring a previously injured or disabled worker among all employers, rewarding enlightened employers at a minor expense shared by all employers.

Every year, every employer pays a few extra cents on their work comp rate into the trust fund. The fund, in turn, pays the cost of the work comp benefits for those injured workers. The actual employer who hired the previously injured worker is not “punished” for doing the right thing. 

Well, now. OMG! With more vets returning with post-traumatic stress disorder, more disabled workers being hired and more Californians eligible to have the trust fund pay for their injuries (and more good employers who don’t have to pay), there’s a “crisis” the Legislature will be told it has to address. 

OMG! A good program is working, putting more disabled people to work and giving enlightened employers a break.

God forbid! 

The Division of Workers' Compensation points out that when these previously disabled workers get injured again, they will cost another $31,000, and somehow that’s too much money, so let’s “reform” the program and keep these people home and out of work.

OMG!

This opinion is republished, with permission, from the California Applicants' Attorneys Association website.