How to Give California a Lift : Don’t flinch--pass workers’ comp reform now

Sacramento has botched the timely delivery of a budget, thus throwing the state into fiscal disarray. Will it also bungle the reform of the state’s workers’ compensation system and put injured workers and employers at the mercy of an insane system that excels mainly in raising costs and killing jobs?

This legislative session could achieve a measure of redemption by comprehensively reforming a system that is supposed to compensate workers injured on the job. Workers’ comp has become little more than an organized scam for avaricious exploiters. Medical-legal reports--evaluations by doctors and psychologists used in disputes over workers’ comp claims-- cost an average of $1,200 a piece, which is much too much. Yet a truly and totally disabled worker receives a maximum payment of $336 a week, which is much too little.

DOMINO EFFECT: Unless major changes are initiated now, skyrocketing workers’ compensation costs could squeeze more teetering California employers out of business or propel them to relocate to states that offer far less costly workers’ compensation systems.

Fortunately, an Assembly-Senate conference committee began meeting Wednesday night to hammer out a reform bill. It must be cleared by Friday so that both houses can vote on it before the end of this legislative session.

There’s bipartisan consensus that a major overhaul is long overdue on all aspects of workers’ compensation: controlling medical treatment costs; reducing legal costs; reducing fraud and abuse; curbing questionable stress claims; revamping vocational rehabilitation; eliminating the minimum insurance rate law, and increasing benefits to injured workers.

But agreement on the big picture could disintegrate in partisan bickering on the depth and scope of the reforms. Committee Republicans Sen. Bill Leonard of Big Bear and Assemblyman Paul Horcher of Whittier have introduced one bill. Democratic Assemblymen Burt Margolin of Los Angeles and Steve Peace of San Diego have submitted a new, somewhat tougher version of a Margolin bill passed by the Assembly two weeks ago. The best of the Republican and Democratic bills should--and can--be merged into a comprehensive reform package.

COP-OUT OPTION: We hope Sacramento doesn’t bow to the political temptation to settle for a watered-down reform bill. This is what happened in 1989. Legislators must meet the test this time and fight off the well-armed, ever-protective special interests that now profit from the system. To allow reform of workers’ compensation to die in this legislative session would be unconscionable.