The fall conference schedule comes to a close with this week’s annual WCRI meeting in Boston. I’ll be posting from my iPhone as the wifi access fee is $100(!) so watch out for typos…
Peter Barth began with a history of work comp, with particular emphasis on the societal issues that helped give rise to Wisconsin’s first in the nation state comp laws. (more accurately the first WC law that survived legal challenges) Barth noted that one county in PA had more than five hundred workplace fatalities one year in the early nineteen-hundreds.
The National Commission on WC and the impact thereof was discussed in some detail. For the non-work comp folks out there, the Commission led to rather remarkable changes in many state work comp systems by shining a very bright light on the differences among and between the various states. By developing and promulgating universal objectives, the Commission helped accelerate the pace of change and modernization in those states that had long lagged more progressive jurisdictions.
This being the anniversary of the passage of Wisconsin’s comp law, there have been many reviews of the history of comp; Barth’s presentation was one of the better ones. Perhaps the most revealing takeaway was the drastic change in medical benefits from the early days.
Barth reported that several states allowed claimants a maximum of fourteen days to obtain medical care, two states had rather brief medical benefits periods (Massachusetts with 14 days) as late as1940.
Next up for public consumption is a discussion of pharmacy costs – which is a subject near and dear indeed.
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Nov
16
