I have written many times on prepping for the federalization of workers' comp. The President Nixon administration’s efforts to possibly make workers' comp a federal insurance program was unknown to me at the time I wrote many of the federalization articles.
Thanks to WorkCompCentral, Prof. David Torrey and John J. Burton Jr. for bringing up an old governmental study of recommendations on what to do about comp in the early 1970s. The 50-year-old study shows that some of the state laws were not adequate in covering injured workers.
The public domain study can be accessed here.
I recommend at least downloading the introduction and executive summary. One can see that workers’ comp has come a long way since the study was published.
The study’s recommendations to the Nixon administration
The study made 19 recommendations. I am not going to cover them all. I will cover the recommendations that were not followed by all the states, and the possible reasons. Please note that I am writing from the point of carriers, self-insureds and employers:
Almost all states complied with the other 16 recommendations with few exceptions. I also agree with the other recommendations.
The major unmentioned recommendation, plus one error
The study recommended that the Nixon administration not federalize workers’ comp programs if the states would enact the recommendations.
Do you see the big error that dates this report? The title has "workmen’s compensation" instead of workers’ compensation. That phrase would be castigated nowadays.
I have often said that workers' comp has stayed the same forever. Now that I look at the concerns and recommendations that states have enacted since the Nixon administration study, I see that some positive changes have occurred over the last 50 years.
This blog post is provided by James Moore, AIC, MBA, ChFC, ARM, and is republished with permission from J&L Risk Management Consultants. Visit the full website at www.cutcompcosts.com.
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