Coalition speaks out against workers' comp proposal

Sacramento Business Journal
Wednesday, February 28, 2007

By Kelly Johnson
Staff writer

A coalition of business and other interests on February 28 criticized a proposed state ballot measure that would chip away at workers' compensation reforms of the last few years.

Californians Against the Job Killer Initiative said the Fair Medical Treatment for Workers Act, proposed earlier this month by a Turlock attorney who represents injured workers, "would enrich applicants' attorneys at the expense of California's economy," the group said in a news release.

The association of attorneys who represent injured workers also has come out against the proposed ballot initiative.

Applicant attorney William Morris submitted his proposed ballot initiative to the Attorney General's Office early this month and amended it Feb. 20. The Attorney General's office still must give the proposal a title and summary.

The initiative would allow injured workers in California to pick their own doctor. Injured workers now go to a network of doctors their employer selects unless they designated a provider before they got hurt. The ballot measure also would force the state Department of Industrial Relations to update its medical fee schedule each year.

Reformers revamped the system in 2004, in part because they maintained too much medical treatment was being given and medical costs needed to be controlled. Critics contend the proposed ballot measure would increase costs.

Morris could not immediately be reached Wednesday afternoon.

The California Applicants Attorneys Association, of which Morris is a member, announced Feb. 16 it also opposes the measure.

Californians Against the Job Killer Initiative is made up of businesses, nonprofits and public entities and is led by Allan Zaremberg, president and chief executive officer of the California Chamber of Commerce and Joel Fox, president of the Small Business Action Committee.

The coalition said it is committed to preserving the workers' compensation reforms enacted in 2004 through Senate Bill 899. Those reforms, the coalition said, have benefited employers and employees, halted skyrocketing medical costs and reduced workers' comp rates on average by 50 percent. The ballot measure, the coalition said, would undo almost all of the reform elements that have contained out-of-control medical costs.

"Everyone in our great state is impacted negatively when workers' compensation costs climb," Zaremberg said in a news release. "Not only small businesses, but also non-profits, school districts, and other public agencies."

The coalition, he said, wants to avoid California again becoming a state that has the highest workers' comp costs in the country.

The California Applicants Attorneys Association's president Linda Atcherley has said her group understands the frustration Morris and others have with the workers' comp system. But, she said, the system is "incredibly complex with many different and often competing interests" and the job of changing it should fall to the Legislature. Injured workers should be able to choose their own doctors. However, she said, "we are concerned regarding some potential cost drivers in the initiative that have nothing to do with delivering benefits to the injured workers, including medical treatment or correcting the catastrophic reduction of benefits for permanent disability."


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