13,000 American civilians have suffered compensable injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan. These are handled through the Federal system, with the Department of Labor having jurisdiction. The volume of cases has grown steadily since 2002, with the DoL now seeing about a thousand cases a month from employers such as Halliburton, Dyncorp, Bechtel and others.
And many of these are not your typical lower back strains. Post-traumatic stress disorder, closed head injuries from IEDs, and shrapnel and concussion injuries, all injuries once limited to soldiers are now suffered by civilians. These injuries are not commonly handled by civilian providers or hospitals, and many claimants are finding it difficult to obtain adequate care for their condition.
Outside of the human cost, the financial implications are staggering. Truck drivers are making upwards of $100k a year, and their workers comp premiums can be as high as $25 – $40 per $100 of payroll. While there is no accurate count of the total number of contractors, at the low end it is 50,000.
Workers comp costs for contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan are over a billion dollars.
Way over.
thanks to the Workers Comp Executive News Digest for the original idea.
Jan
23
