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Disability Law

Workers Comp Insider

About workers compensation insurance, risk management, workplace health and safety, occupational medicine, and related topics.
By Lynch Ryan

Post Frequency: 5.3/day

Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 15:16:48

Fresh Health Wonk Review and assorted news briefs from around the web

Posted on September 17, 2009
Hot of the presses, a freshly baked edition of Health Wonk Review posted by Rich Elmore of Healthcare Technology News. There's some really good commentary by some really smart people - including reactions to Obama's speech last week. Getting results from managed care - Joe Paduda posts a list of questions for your work comp managed care vendors over at...

Annals of Dress Codes: With That Ring, I thee Fire!

Posted on September 15, 2009
Hawwah Santiago was a "sandwich artist" at a Subway restaurant in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She was fired after refusing to remove her nose ring while at work. Visible body piercings (other than earrings) violated the company dress code. Ms. Santiago sued, claiming that the nose ring was a practice of her Nuwaibian religion...

Oklahoma: OK!

Posted on September 14, 2009
The Insider just returned from a speaking engagement in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The occasion was the annual workers comp conference sponsored by the judiciary that manages comp in the state. I was invited by fellow blogger Judge Tom Leonard, whose blog provides valuable information to comp practitioners in the state...

More on the work comp-financed weight loss surgery ruling

Posted on September 11, 2009
Charles Wilson of AP has written an article about the Indiana court ruling which determined that Boston's The Gourmet Pizza must pay for an employee's weight loss surgery under workers comp. For the article, Wilson spoke with attorneys representing both sides of the issue, as well as our own Tom Lynch for the workers comp perspective...

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Cavalcade of Risk, dereriorating market, breast cancer, labor unions, and more

Posted on September 10, 2009
Cavalcade of Risk #87 is brought to you from the land down under - Andrew of Australia's OzRisk is this week's host - check it out! Deterioration in Work Comp market - In his blog Comp Time, Roberto Ceniceros discusses a grim recent A.M. Best report pointing to deteriorating conditions in the workers comp industry...

Study reveals widespread labor law violations for low-wage workers

Posted on September 08, 2009
According to the Department of Labor's site on the history of Labor Day, the holiday is a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country. But for low wage workers, there isn't much to celebrate this holiday...

Health Wonk Review and other news briefs

Posted on September 03, 2009
Jared Rhoads has posted a fresh Health Wonk Review at The Lucidicus Project. There are many interesting posts running the gamut: healthcare reform, home birth, hospice, hypertension and a variety of other topics that the health bloggers found noteworthy in the last two weeks...

California Scheming, Revisited

Posted on September 02, 2009
State governments are scrambling for cash and looking, it appears, in all the wrong places. Back in April we blogged the abortive attempt by the state of Colorado to use the claim reserves from its state-run workers comp fund to plug the deficit hole: a bad idea that died a quick death in the thin mountain air...

Thumbs Down on New York Texting Ban?

Posted on September 01, 2009
As a follow up to Julie Ferguson's gruesome imagery from Monday's blog, we find Clyde Haberman's entertaining piece in the New York Times about the state's new statute outlawing texting. As of November 1, it will be illegal for anyone to drive and text in the Empire State...

Brutal, graphic video aimed at teens: don't text while driving

Posted on August 31, 2009
There's been quite a lot of media coverage on the high risk of texting while driving and several states are lining up to issue bans or restrictions on the practice. We recently featured a texting while driving game that let's you get a rough gauge of how you'd fare while texting at the wheel...

Health and safety news from the blogosphere

Posted on August 26, 2009
Money-Driven Medicine - Maggie Mahar, one of the regular Health Wonk bloggers who we admire, is author of the book Money driven medicine: the real reason health care costs so much. Her book has been made into a documentary by Alex Gibney, the producer noted for his documentary expo Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room...

Dying to Find Fault in Wyoming

Posted on August 24, 2009
Wyoming might be a good place to work, but it's also a good place to die at work. The mortality rate for occupational injuries is three times the national average, with 15.6 fatalities per 100,000 workers. Many of these fatalities occur in the oil fields, where "roughnecks" make pretty good wages in exchange for working in relatively dangerous conditions...

News roundup: Health Wonk Review, WC recovery, fatalities, joint & several, AIG and web tools

Posted on August 21, 2009
Things are sure getting ugly out there in the national debate on health policy. Read what the health policy wonks in the blogosphere have to say about all this - a fresh Health Wonk Review is posted over at David Williams Health Business Blog. The recovery and WC - Joe Paduda offers an excellent analysis of the likely impact of...

The Cost of Getting Better

Posted on August 20, 2009
Earlier this week, my colleague Julie Ferguson blogged an intriguing case in Indiana, where Adam Childers, an obese pizza baker, suffered a back injury when he was hit by a swinging freezer door. He was unable to get better due to his obesity. As a result, the Indiana court ordered the employer to pay for weight reduction surgery, to be...

California Fraud Bill: The Solution is a Problem

Posted on August 19, 2009
California has a California-sized fraud problem, with much of action in the medical arena. Unscrupulous providers are billing for services that are never provided, often under the names of people who have never been injured. It's identity theft targeted at businesses, not individuals...

Compensable weight loss surgery? A new wrinkle in obesity

Posted on August 18, 2009
Yesterday, my colleague blogged about employers that refuse to hire smokers and cited another employer who would like to extend that ban to obese applicants. Health-related matters and their associated costs are challenging for employers and we expect they will continue to be played out in the courts...

Fire the Smokers! Tax the Fat?

Posted on August 17, 2009
Back in December of 2006 we blogged the story of Scott Rodrigues, a new hire of the Scotts lawn care company, who was fired after failing a drug test. No news here, perhaps, except that the drug in his system, nicotine is perfectly legal. Scott's is self-insured for health benefits, so they have a vested interest in making sure that...

Cavalcade of Risk, Downunder style

Posted on August 13, 2009
This week's Cavalcade has gone global. Our New Zealand blog neighbor Russell Hutchinson of the Chatswood Consulting Blog has posted the Downunder version of Cavalcade of Risk. In addition to doing a roundup of posts from the usual suspects, he's amassed a selection of risk-related posts from New Zealand bloggers...

Independent Contractors: The Bare Essentials

Posted on August 12, 2009
The King Arthur Lounge in Chelsea, MA does not exactly bring to mind the Knights of the Round Table. It's a tough place in a tough town - a strip joint with a motel attached (don't ask, don't tell). The strippers had to work under some pretty difficult conditions...

Can you hear me now? Work-related injuries for musicians

Posted on August 11, 2009
Last week, 61-year old rock musician Steven Tyler fell off the stage and suffered a broken shoulder, along with stitches in his head and back. He has had to cancel upcoming shows, though it's likely he'll be on a self-imposed return-to-work plan in the near future...

The End of Civil Discourse?

Posted on August 10, 2009
We live, alas, in interesting times. As the health care debate spirals downward, the fault lines in our culture become more and more evident. On one side, anti-reformers stack town meetings to prevent any meaningful dialogue from taking place. These folks are even trying to intimidate unions...

Health Wonk Review's Recess Edition and news from the blogosphere

Posted on August 06, 2009
Congress may be on vacation but the dedicated health policy bloggers are certainly on the case so you should face no shortage of wonkery. Jaan Sidorov has posted the August Recess Edition of Health Wonk Review at Disease Management Care Blog - well worth your perusal...

Distractions Behind the Wheel, Revisited

Posted on August 04, 2009
The other Nicholas Sparks is in a bit of trouble: not the well-known writer, but an obscure 25 year old tow truck driver from upstate New York. The lesser known Sparks has earned himself a place in the Business Hall of Shame when he raised multi-tasking to new heights (or better, depths)...

Compensable Fun

Posted on August 03, 2009
There is an ongoing debate concerning the compensability of injuries that occur during company sponsored recreation. As Dr. Suess might say, "These things are fun and fun is good," except when your employer makes you do it. There is a fine line between employees participating because they want to, as opposed to feeling that they have to...

New Cavalcade of Risk; other news briefs

Posted on July 30, 2009
Nancy Germond is hosting this week's Cavalcade of Risk at her blog, Insurance Copywriter. She should get hazardous duty pay - she tells us that it is 113 degrees by noon on any given day in Phoenix - yikes. Nancy's post covers topics as diverse as damaged guitars, dog health, and - of course - the health care debate...

Homicidal Employers

Posted on July 29, 2009
Back in May, we blogged the appalling story of Albania Deleon, a legal immigrant who founded Environmental Compliance Training (ECT), the largest asbestos removal training school in New England. Despite the fact that the training only requires 32 hours, she frequently sold certificates of completion to "students" who never attended classes...

When lightning strikes

Posted on July 28, 2009
Summer brings extremes in weather that pose dangers to workers and challenges to employers who must plan for worker safety. This week, four construction workers were hit by lightning in Michigan. A quick Google search demonstrates this is not an anomaly - refinery workers, airport workers, firefighters, farmers and other working people all have too-close encounters with lightning, and a...

Hot off the presses: Health Wonk Review; other WC news notes

Posted on July 23, 2009
Paul Testa of New Health Dialogue Blog takes the notion of a carnival to heart while hosting this week's edition of Health Wonk Review: All's Fair in Love and Health Reform. Join him as he takes us along the Midway that is Pennsylvania Avenue, the big tent of bipartisanship, the funhouse mirrors of the health reform debates, and the roller...

Making Safety a Universal Language

Posted on July 21, 2009
The following article is a guest post by Joey Lucia, a loss prevention supervisor at Austin-based Texas Mutual Insurance Co., the largest provider of workers? compensation insurance in Texas. Non-English-speaking Hispanic workers present unique safety challenges...

Injured Jocks and Medical Costs

Posted on July 20, 2009
College athletics is big business. While athletes are not paid for their efforts (well, some are), they can reap substantial benefits while pursuing glory on the playing fields of their Alma Maters. But athletes, like workers, are prone to injuries. And once injured, they may find themselves liable for the cost of medical treatment...

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