It’s about time someone stood up to the trail lawyers who’ve siphoned off benefits from injured workers and driven employers out of Oklahoma. Way to go!
Bob is apparently a business owner who along with Speaker Hiett, Rep. Fred Morgan, Sen. Scott Pruitt, and Sen. Glenn Coffee have no idea what truly is driving the cost of workers’ compensation premiums and who really just want to be able to run herd over injured workers as they see fit. True reform should focus on insurance regulation and the rising cost of medical care not on the right of an injured worker to hire and pay for an attorney that he needs to stand up against his employer and their insurance company who obviously have the benefit of counsel. Without the right to counsel, we should abolish the protection of the workers’ compensation act and go back to district court for jury trials when an employer hurts a worker. Not one employer has been quoted as avoiding or leaving our state over workers’ compensation premiums. Rising healthcare costs and bad investment returns of insurance companies are nationwide problems. If republicans get their way it will simply shift responsiblity for many injuries to the welfare system as most workers will not be able to fight back. This will eventually lead to a crisis situation much like that which brought about FDR’s New Deal. They may just get what they are asking for.
Joe sounds like a trial lawyer, concerned that hunting season has opened on the goose that laid the golden egg for lawyers in Oklahoma.
Just hope the business-friendly house of rep.s get enough attention focused on this issue so the public can see whether it truly is the legal, medical or insurance community that’s aggravating the problem.
One need only compare Oklahoma’s staggering WC rates and embarrassingly meager employee benefits perpetuated by our “judicial” system to neighboring states’ “administrative” to see which component is out of balance.
Don’t fear, Joe. There’s still plenty of asbestos to go around and there’ll always be auto accidents . . .
In my opinion, injuried workers already “rake it in”. It would have been nice if this article would have explained exactly how it is possible to increase benefits for workers and reduce medical costs for workers (in my world, 100% of medical costs related to a work injury are not the responsibility of the injured worker anyway) with out shifting the burden to the employer. Someone please spell it out for me!
Kathy, Since the 3 major components of a WC are 1) Lost Wages, 2) Medical Expenses and 3) Legal Expenses, one way to see that legitimate work-related injuries are not short-changed is to better manage 3).
Admittedly 1) & 2) are not exepmt from waste & fraud, but it’s embarrassing how much higher WC litigation expense is in OK than in adjoining states (many with comparable benefits and lower rates).
At least with 3) fixed it should become really obvious whether it’s the medical community or the “comp-savvy”, professional claimants who are exasperbating the problem.
I suspect you really know nothing about injured workers’ rights other than the propaganda you have read in the paper or been provided by your Chamber of Commerce buddies. If you, unlike the republican party, were to actually study our surrounding states and for that matter, all state’s WC systems as I have, you would see that we actually have one of the most timely benefit delivery systems in the country and workers’ benefits are a function of the state’s average weekly wage not some other state’s average weekly wage. You would also know that TX and FL are actually now looking at our system as a model since they have in the past eliminated a workers’ right to counsel and lowered workers’ benefits only to find out that costs continued to go up. We allow injured workers to have an attorney to protect what little rights they have. Have you ever read the constitution? If a claimant receives what he is by law entitled to and out of that money, chooses to pay his lawyer for wrestling it from the hands of an uneducated adjuster and her lawyer, how can you argue against it. You simply want to rid the state of democrats who stand up for injured workers by getting the lawyers who support them. If you had any knowledge of the system and the protection it affords employers (by not having to appear before juries for accidents caused by their negligence)you would be seeking an answer to rising health costs and insurance regulation.
Joe,
Maybe I have the advantage, being “uneducated” and all. I have been adjusting workers’ comp claims in Oklahoma for 10 years and I have yet to see a claimant taken advantage of by anyone including the employer or the insurance carrier. I am just a little familiar with the workers compensation laws in Oklahoma and I know what an injured workers rights are and in order to protect my license and my employer I provide the claimant with everything he/she is entitled to. In my world, what adds insult to these injuries is that these accident typically occur due to the stupidity of the worker, not the employer.
But hey, that’s the Oklahoma workers’ compensation system….paying for stupidity!
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It’s about time someone stood up to the trail lawyers who’ve siphoned off benefits from injured workers and driven employers out of Oklahoma. Way to go!
Bob is apparently a business owner who along with Speaker Hiett, Rep. Fred Morgan, Sen. Scott Pruitt, and Sen. Glenn Coffee have no idea what truly is driving the cost of workers’ compensation premiums and who really just want to be able to run herd over injured workers as they see fit. True reform should focus on insurance regulation and the rising cost of medical care not on the right of an injured worker to hire and pay for an attorney that he needs to stand up against his employer and their insurance company who obviously have the benefit of counsel. Without the right to counsel, we should abolish the protection of the workers’ compensation act and go back to district court for jury trials when an employer hurts a worker. Not one employer has been quoted as avoiding or leaving our state over workers’ compensation premiums. Rising healthcare costs and bad investment returns of insurance companies are nationwide problems. If republicans get their way it will simply shift responsiblity for many injuries to the welfare system as most workers will not be able to fight back. This will eventually lead to a crisis situation much like that which brought about FDR’s New Deal. They may just get what they are asking for.
Joe sounds like a trial lawyer, concerned that hunting season has opened on the goose that laid the golden egg for lawyers in Oklahoma.
Just hope the business-friendly house of rep.s get enough attention focused on this issue so the public can see whether it truly is the legal, medical or insurance community that’s aggravating the problem.
One need only compare Oklahoma’s staggering WC rates and embarrassingly meager employee benefits perpetuated by our “judicial” system to neighboring states’ “administrative” to see which component is out of balance.
Don’t fear, Joe. There’s still plenty of asbestos to go around and there’ll always be auto accidents . . .
In my opinion, injuried workers already “rake it in”. It would have been nice if this article would have explained exactly how it is possible to increase benefits for workers and reduce medical costs for workers (in my world, 100% of medical costs related to a work injury are not the responsibility of the injured worker anyway) with out shifting the burden to the employer. Someone please spell it out for me!
Kathy, Since the 3 major components of a WC are 1) Lost Wages, 2) Medical Expenses and 3) Legal Expenses, one way to see that legitimate work-related injuries are not short-changed is to better manage 3).
Admittedly 1) & 2) are not exepmt from waste & fraud, but it’s embarrassing how much higher WC litigation expense is in OK than in adjoining states (many with comparable benefits and lower rates).
At least with 3) fixed it should become really obvious whether it’s the medical community or the “comp-savvy”, professional claimants who are exasperbating the problem.
Bob,
I suspect you really know nothing about injured workers’ rights other than the propaganda you have read in the paper or been provided by your Chamber of Commerce buddies. If you, unlike the republican party, were to actually study our surrounding states and for that matter, all state’s WC systems as I have, you would see that we actually have one of the most timely benefit delivery systems in the country and workers’ benefits are a function of the state’s average weekly wage not some other state’s average weekly wage. You would also know that TX and FL are actually now looking at our system as a model since they have in the past eliminated a workers’ right to counsel and lowered workers’ benefits only to find out that costs continued to go up. We allow injured workers to have an attorney to protect what little rights they have. Have you ever read the constitution? If a claimant receives what he is by law entitled to and out of that money, chooses to pay his lawyer for wrestling it from the hands of an uneducated adjuster and her lawyer, how can you argue against it. You simply want to rid the state of democrats who stand up for injured workers by getting the lawyers who support them. If you had any knowledge of the system and the protection it affords employers (by not having to appear before juries for accidents caused by their negligence)you would be seeking an answer to rising health costs and insurance regulation.
Joe,
Maybe I have the advantage, being “uneducated” and all. I have been adjusting workers’ comp claims in Oklahoma for 10 years and I have yet to see a claimant taken advantage of by anyone including the employer or the insurance carrier. I am just a little familiar with the workers compensation laws in Oklahoma and I know what an injured workers rights are and in order to protect my license and my employer I provide the claimant with everything he/she is entitled to. In my world, what adds insult to these injuries is that these accident typically occur due to the stupidity of the worker, not the employer.
But hey, that’s the Oklahoma workers’ compensation system….paying for stupidity!