2006 WORKERS' COMPENSATION LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM

 

Following is The Business Council's 2006 Legislative Program. It identifies priority issues to be addressed by the Committees and Councils during 2006.

• Support payment of comp benefits in a non-scheduled permanent-partial impairment case to a minimum of 250 weeks and a maximum of 500 weeks.
  
  
• Support adoption of objective medical guidelines to determine the degree of disability in permanent-partial disability cases.The guidelines should consider anatomic and functional disability and provide a standardized, replicable method for physicians to use to determine comprehensive, whole person impairment percentages.
  
  
• Support reduction in the assessment for the second injury fund from 150 percent of the prior year disbursements to 115 percent.
  
  
• Support partial benefit offset when the claimant begins to receive, or becomes eligible for, pension and/or social security benefits.
  
  
• Support payment of scheduled awards at one-half the claimant's total disability for periods that do not represent actual time lost.
  
  
• Support amendments to sections 240 and 241 of the labor law to create a comparative negligence standard on third party suits.
  
  
• Support prohibiting payment of benefits if the employee injures themselves during the perpetration of an illegal act or if the injury occurred under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
  
  
• Support changing the methodology for comp assessments for self-insured trusts (and safety groups and the State Fund, if they desire). After the change, the self-insured trusts should be responsible for collecting their same share of total assessments without shifting any of the responsibility to other insurers in the system.
  
  
• Support aggressive pursuit of fraudulent cases in the comp system.

Click here for the 2006 Legislative Program for all Issue areas.