The Demolition of Workers’ Comp; ProPublica

[edhopper]

http://www.propublica.org/article/the-demolition-of-workers-compensation

Over the past decade, state after state has been dismantling America’s workers’ comp system with disastrous consequences for many of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer serious injuries at work each year, a ProPublica and NPR investigation has found.

The cutbacks have been so drastic in some places that they virtually guarantee injured workers will plummet into poverty. Workers often battle insurance companies for years to get the surgeries, prescriptions and basic help their doctors recommend.

I know people on Workers Comp. It is barely subsistence living. This is out and out breaking the back of the working class. And the tax breaks for corporations go forward at a relentless pace.

The MSM loves stories of Workers Comp fraud, which is lower than most other types of insurance. In fact Employer fraud is far greater than worker fraud. But it serves the propaganda to demonize workers. Do you ever see a story about how hard it is for workers on comp, who can't go back to work?

[FSogol]

1. K&R. NPR did a story on this today too.

Injured Workers Suffer As 'Reforms' Limit Workers' Compensation Benefits

Until recently, America's workers could rely on a compact struck at the dawn of the Industrial Age: They'd give up their right to sue. In exchange, if they were injured on the job, their employers would pay their medical bills and enough of their wages to help them get by while they recovered.

No longer.

Over the past decade, state after state has been dismantling America's workers' comp system with disastrous consequences for many of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer serious injuries at work each year, a ProPublica and NPR investigation has found.

Read or listen here: http://www.npr.org/2015/03/04/390441655/injured-workers-suffer-as-reforms-limit-workers-compensation-benefits

[edhopper]

2. So now the system is completely rigged

Shit compensation, and still can't sue.

[FSogol]

3. K & R. n/t

[WillyT]

4. K & R !!!

[edhopper]

5. I appreciate the K&Rs

not sure why this thread got such a minimal response?
Seems an important issue to me.

[Omaha Steve]

6. I was going to post this

Did a search first. Missed this when it was posted.

K&R!

[edhopper]

7. Most ignored it

A pity.

[haele]

8. U.S. social norms (i.e. Free Market Calvinism) have developed the tendancy to monitize everything.

The value of a citizen is as a commodity that either has the ability to purchase whatever quality of life they are able to. The corollary is that "if you are blessed enough to be of the elect (or of "prime grade&quot , you are expected to be able to live a high-quality of life. So, you can either be a "finely engineered one-of-a-kind luxury item" or a "cheap, disposable mass market product".
Welcome to the Citizens United world. Corporations are people, too, and the bigger they are, the more right they have to resources.
Ethics and "Corporate Social Responsibility" is a joke when everything is a metric for making profits. Commodities in this society tend to be disposable if they aren't sustainable or recyclable.

So, if you, a person, aren't "producing", or have the potential to produce a monitary value to someone or some organization, you have no value. As it is, workers are fungible for the most part. Why should taxpayer money be spent on something that would be better off in a landfill or a "kill shelter" if it has no use or no one else could take care of it?

You just know that's the "Goldman-Sachs Solution"...

Haele