Letters to the Editor
Comp Bill Aids Insurers Most

To the Editor:

When the robber barons ruled over the New York State Legislature in the 1800s, Mark Twain wrote that: "No man's life, liberty, or property are safe as long as the legislature is in session."

Robber barons such as Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller may be gone, but one could argue that they have been replaced by highly profitable insurance companies which today largely control both the health-care and Workers' Compensation industries. Unfortunately, our new Governor has gotten off to a very bad start by rewarding these highly profitable insurance companies with the legislated right to force permanently partially disabled workers into grinding poverty by terminating their "reduced earnings" benefits after a few years time.

At the same time, the Governor's proposed Workers' Compensation bill would be saving these insurance companies a projected billion dollars over the next 10 years' time as permanently partially disabled workers are forced onto this state's welfare rolls.

In a shameful collapse to these special interests, the State AFL-CIO has now trashed the progressive principles of the century-old state Workers' Compensation system by agreeing to return to the Victorian principles of injured laborers being punished for suffering an on-the-job injury. Instead of standing up for their members who suffer career-ending on-the-job injuries, the AFL-CIO has endorsed a new system that will make it certain that in a few years' time, a growing percentage of these permanently partially injured workers will now be left with no cash benefits to partially support themselves or their families.

To illustrate my point, say an auto mechanic suffers a torn rotator cuff in an on-the-job accident. Under either the current law or the proposed law, the injured employee will receive the necessary surgery and physical therapy to return to gainful employment. The same injured employee will also receive temporary cash benefits while he is unable to work as a mechanic.

But let us further assume that this mechanic has suffered a severe tear in his rotator cuff and, following surgical repair, can no longer lift or install heavy replacement parts in a car. If this is the case, the mechanic will lose his mechanic's job and require job retraining. Under the current law, the mechanic could apply to the Workers' Compensation Board to be classified as permanently partially disabled. If the employee succeeded in winning that PPD classification, he would receive a generally small weekly benefit that was designed to partially compensate the employee for the reduced earnings he was now making in his new employment.

Under the proposed law, these PPD employees could only collect these "reduced earnings" benefits for a certain number of weeks under a new Workers' Compensation schedule. After a few years, these PPD benefits would run out and the former mechanic would be facing grinding poverty even if he was working in a new, lower-paying job. Despite the fact that this permanently injured mechanic would have lost his ability to earn a mechanic's wage for life, the former mechanic would now be told that he didn't qualify for total disability benefits under the new law because he could sit in a guardhouse while earning the minimum wage. If the former mechanic applied to the Social Security Administration for disability benefits, he would be told the same thing.

Given these harsh economic realities, this PPD mechanic could only turn to the welfare system in an attempt to support his or her family after the PPD benefits were exhausted. Thus, in a few short years, the state and local governments will be picking up the costs of supporting retrained PPD workers who were under-employed following a serious on-the-job injury.

This writer certainly agrees that the current Workers' Compensation system would benefit from creative reform. But as we also find in the health-care industry, claimants, doctors and hospitals are forced to waste much time and money trying to collect payments from insurers who are not penalized for their dilatory tactics. There is no question that streamlining the Workers' Compensation procedures would benefit injured workers, their medical providers and the insurance companies alike.

But instead of government and labor pursuing true reform of the Workers' Compensation system, the public is now told the falsehood by a Democratic Governor that we have to force future PPD workers into grinding poverty in order to jump-start this state's lagging economy.

Governor Spitzer should remember that he gained his popularity as State Attorney General because he followed in the footsteps of populist Presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt who attempted to rein in the economic power of the monopolies of his day. Instead of Governor Spitzer rewarding well-heeled insurance companies at the expense of this state's injured workers, the Governor should scrap his proposed Workers' Compensation bill because it is a fundamental betrayal of the liberal "no-fault" principles upon which the Workers' Compensation system was founded a century ago.

May I suggest that the Governor utilize his renowned investigative skills to publicly analyze what the true medical and Workers' Compensation insurance profits are in this state. Following such an analysis, the Governor, the Legislature and labor could then propose the creation of a true non-profit Workers' Compensation Permanent Partial Disability Pool as a viable financial alternative to the excesses of the insurance company robber barons of our day.

RICHARD J. McALLAN, Former President, EMS Local 2507