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| | Wisconsin Legislators To Vote Tomorrow On Scott Walker’s Re-Do Of Wisconsin's Workers’ Compensation System By Lonce LaMon - May 26, 2015
The Wisconsin Legislature’s budget committee will vote tomorrow on Governor Scott Walker’s proposed restructuring of Wisconsin’s workers’ compensation system. One coalition is calling on lawmakers to slow it down.
These attorneys who represent workers, employers, and insurers state that the state of Wisconsin is already a national model for workers’ compensation. They assert that the overall costs in Wisconsin’s more than $1 billion system are lower than those of its peer states. They say injured workers in Wisconsin spend less time away from their jobs and that the premiums in the state are only about 4% higher than the national average.
“It’s not a perfect system, but it’s pretty close,” said J. Patrick Condon, a defense attorney.
As part of the state budget, Governor Walker has proposed splitting up the workers’ compensation program, which is currently housed in the state labor department, and shifting parts of it to two different agencies in order to make it more efficient. But some say the proposal could make the system worse and not better.
It sidesteps the state’s long term process for making changes to the workers’ compensation system. The proposal did not go through the Workers’ Compensation Advisory Council, a group made up of workers and employers with input from insurers. The council has traditionally scrutinized changes to the program and reached a consensus on them before submitting a bill to lawmakers.
Scott Walker’s budget bill would move the administration of the workers’ compensation system from the state Department of Workforce Development to the Office of the Commissioner of Insurance. In addition, the handling of disputed claims through a process similar to a court would move from the workforce agency to the Department of Administration, which handles other quasi-judicial disputes.
The group of attorneys opposed to the budget change said they feel the work of both administering workers’ compensation and resolving disputed claims is done efficiently now because the entire program is housed in the same agency. It’s now easy to get answers and results from the system, and any reshaping of this existing system will put these results at risk. Therefore, any proposed changes need to be handled carefully outside the state budget bill.
lonce@adjustercom.com; journalist Lonce LaMon
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