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Injured Workers Deserve Better
RECEIVED Mon., April 27, 2015
Dear Editor,
The basis for “The Hightower Report: Corporate Weasels Try to Escape Paying for Workers’ Injuries,” April 24, was a factually incorrect Mother Jones “article.” Readers who like to do their own research are welcome to visit our website (www.arawc.org/blog) and read a point-by-point refutation.
What ARAWC believes should be discussed is how to best care for injured workers in a way that makes sense for the employee and the employer. The goal of any occupational injury benefit plan should be to expedite benefits to injured employees, getting them back to work quickly.
It takes an attorney to understand workers’ comp benefits or how to access them. On the other hand, an Option – the workers’ comp alternative ARAWC advocates for – requires all employees to receive a document that details the exact benefits and process for accessing them, in language understandable by the average worker.
What about the benefit caps mentioned? Workers’ comp operates on this “grand bargain” from 100 years ago, which removes all legal liability from an employer. We believe legal exposure forces the employer to have some skin in the game. This accountability results in safer workplaces and more responsiveness to employee injuries. In the extraordinarily rare instance where an employee reaches a medical benefits cap, the Option gives him or her the right to sue and receive funds above the cap to cover medical needs. Workers’ comp doesn’t do this. Option-covered employees that miss time from work also routinely receive more lost wage benefits than are paid by workers’ comp.
So while Mr. Hightower spends his time bashing job-creating businesses and defending the broken workers’ comp system, we will spend our time advocating for a free-market Option alternative, which is just that – an option. Injured workers deserve better outcomes, not baseless hyperbole.
The basis for “The Hightower Report: Corporate Weasels Try to Escape Paying for Workers’ Injuries,” April 24, was a factually incorrect Mother Jones “article.” Readers who like to do their own research are welcome to visit our website (www.arawc.org/blog) and read a point-by-point refutation.
What ARAWC believes should be discussed is how to best care for injured workers in a way that makes sense for the employee and the employer. The goal of any occupational injury benefit plan should be to expedite benefits to injured employees, getting them back to work quickly.
It takes an attorney to understand workers’ comp benefits or how to access them. On the other hand, an Option – the workers’ comp alternative ARAWC advocates for – requires all employees to receive a document that details the exact benefits and process for accessing them, in language understandable by the average worker.
What about the benefit caps mentioned? Workers’ comp operates on this “grand bargain” from 100 years ago, which removes all legal liability from an employer. We believe legal exposure forces the employer to have some skin in the game. This accountability results in safer workplaces and more responsiveness to employee injuries. In the extraordinarily rare instance where an employee reaches a medical benefits cap, the Option gives him or her the right to sue and receive funds above the cap to cover medical needs. Workers’ comp doesn’t do this. Option-covered employees that miss time from work also routinely receive more lost wage benefits than are paid by workers’ comp.
So while Mr. Hightower spends his time bashing job-creating businesses and defending the broken workers’ comp system, we will spend our time advocating for a free-market Option alternative, which is just that – an option. Injured workers deserve better outcomes, not baseless hyperbole.
Richard Evans
Executive Director of ARAWC
Executive Director of ARAWC
[Jim Hightower responds: It’s unsurprising that Evans, the top lobbyist for a Walmart front group, would use factual errors and hyperbole to accuse me and Mother Jones of using factual errors and hyperbole in articles that rightly condemn ARAWC’s privatized workers comp scheme. He’s dead wrong, for example, to assert that I spend my time “bashing job-creating businesses” – in fact, I’m the proprietor of one! I do, however, expose the shameful greed of corporations (like the ones he fronts for) that use their campaign cash and vast lobbying networks to rig the rules against hard-hit working people. In Texas, which already has the corporate utopia of privatized workers comp that Evans & Company intend to impose nationwide, fewer than half of the privatized plans offer benefits to seriously injured workers – or even to families of workers killed on the job.]
