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| | Claimants Taking the Easy Way Out By Robert Warne - January 29, 2003Workers’ compensation waves have been crashing on the shores of State Disability Insurance (SDI) and are being blamed for saturating the department with claims.
The compensation overlap between SDI and workers’ compensation has left officials pointing the finger at each other for overpayment and underpayment issues.
More often than officials would like, claimants will opt for the easy SDI solution because it is required to pay claims within 14 days, rather than take a gamble on workers’ compensation.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, auditors believe the extreme complexity of the workers' compensation system is leading to a significant portion of the errors. Also, accounting for 30 percent of the overpayments are cases that involve double-dipping into SDI and workers’ compensation and people who have filed with the wrong benefit program.
The SDI told the Chronicle that it doesn't keep track of how much is wasted because of this particular problem, but it has collected just over $531 million in overpayments from the workers' compensation system and private disability insurers since 1998 and continues to aggressively pursue payments.
State Sen. Richard Alarcon, D-Los Angeles, chairman of the Labor and Industrial Relations Committee, plans to hold hearings in February to examine the relationship between the state’s SDI and work comp benefit rivalries.
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