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Workers’ Compensation Policy Review Summary of the Contents – May/June 2005 Workers’ compensation costs vary considerably among private sector employers depending on factors such as geographical location, the industry, the occupations of the employees, and whether the workers are unionized. The Bureau of Labor Statistics increased the amount of information on employers’ costs in 2004, and Florence Blum and John Burton analyze the augmented data in “Workers’ Compensation Costs in 2004: Regional, Industrial, and Other Variations.” An example is that workers’ compensation costs for all employers in service-producing industries averaged 1.96 percent of payroll. However, the range among service industries was substantial: workers’ compensation costs were 3.01 percent of payroll in trade, transportation, and utilities, but only 0.83 percent of payroll for financial industries. Another example is that nationally, workers’ compensation costs for employers were 2.45 percent of payroll, but these costs were 3.44 percent of payroll in the West Census Region but only 2.01 percent of payroll in the Northeast Region. Ed Welch asserts that a great deal has been written about the problems that employers and insurers experienced in workers’ compensation and that the complaints resulted in many changes favoring employers. He identifies a series of problems with the program that adversely affect workers, such as laws in some states that make it harder for older workers to qualify for benefits, and he provides “A Bill of Rights for Injured Workers” to deal with these problems. John Burton, in “Coverage of Work-Related Diseases by Workers’ Compensation Programs,” describes a number of legal aspects of state workers’ compensation laws that preclude many workers with work-related diseases from receiving benefits. These limitations include time limits for filing claims after the last date the worker was exposed to a toxic substance. A recent publication by J. Paul Leigh and John A. Robbins, “Occupational Disease and Workers’ Compensation: Coverage, Costs, and Consequences,” is summarized. First, the authors use epidemiological data to estimate the deaths and medical costs associated with occupational diseases. Second, they use data from state workers’ compensation programs to estimate the number of compensable cases and deaths attributed to occupational diseases. Third, they compare the epidemiological data and the program data to estimate that workers’ compensation programs did not compensate 98.9 percent of the deaths due to occupational disease in 1999.
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