Making ends meet on healthcare
One of the key long-term concerns of many accident survivors involves finding acceptable and affordable health insurance. Two news stories this week show how daunting this task is and point out the vital need for accident victims to ensure regular (and significant) funding to cover their healthcare needs.
Start with indications that many employees are having their weekly hours cut so they fall below the coming federal standard to qualify for employer-sponsored health coverage, according to this new survey from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans.
Gould & Lamb’s National Institute for Medicare & Medicaid Education
The National Institute for Medicare & Medicaid Education will be hosting the 2 remaining Medicare Secondary Payer (MSP) Compliance conferences on our 2013 schedule in Boston on June 24-25 and Chicago September 9-10.
Attend this event and learn the intricacies of SMART Act repercussions, CMS Regulatory Updates, Workers’ Compensation, Risk Management, Liability, Medicare Set-Asides, Mandatory Insurer Reporting, Conditional Payments, Post-Settlement Administration and more! Read more…
Opioid Epidemic Plagues Workers’ Comp By Denise Johnson and Don Jergler
The national “epidemic” of opioid usage has garnered a great deal of public attention, but amid those concerns is a less publicized battle being waged by workers’ compensation stakeholders who are stepping up efforts to call more attention to the use of the potent pain relieving narcotics by injured workers. Read more…
News From LexisNexis:
Update From the Benefits Review Board, by Karen Koenig, Associate General Counsel,
“Longshore, Benefits Review Board. BRB Statistical Update. The Board began this fiscal year in October 2012 with 114 pending Longshore appeals. During the last fiscal year, which ended September 30, 2012, the Board received 169 appeals in cases under the Longshore and Defense Base Acts, 32 fewer than the year before. A total of 205 Longshore Act decisions were issued, seven more than the year before; 17 orders on reconsideration also were issued….Read more”
Compensation Orders in Litigated LHWCA Claims: What the ALJs and the Parties Should Know, by Yelena Zaslavskaya, Senior Attorney for Longshore, Office of Administrative Law Judges, U.S. Department of Labor.
“The Longshore Act provides for administration of claims and informal dispute resolution by the District Directors within the Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs (“OWCP”), as well as formal adjudication of claims before the Office of Administrative Law Judges (“OALJ”). See 33 U.S.C.S. §§ 901, 919. In a recent decision, the Supreme Court described as follows the dispute resolution process under the LHWCA…Read more..”
High Threshold Exists to Stay Payment of Future Medical Benefits, by Thomas A. Robinson, JD.
“In two consolidated cases, quoting Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the Alaska Supreme Court recently held that in order to stay the payment of future medical benefits ordered by the state’s Workers’ Compensation Board, the employer must show the existence of the probability that the appeal will be decided adversely to the compensation recipient.
Construing AS 23.30.125(c), the court acknowledged that the “probability of success on the merits” was a high threshold and that the employer often could not recover overpaid benefits in all cases; nevertheless, there were good reasons to treat medical care, especially medical care sought in the first two years following an injury, as similar to “periodic disability payments on which an employee relies as a salary substitute.” The court reasoned that…read more about this case and other cases on Employee Status, Retaliatory Discharge, and Disfigurement.”
Author Michael B. Stack, CPA, Director of Operations, Amaxx Risk Solutions, Inc. is an expert in employer communication systems and part of the Amaxx team helping companies reduce their workers compensation costs by 20% to 50%. He is a writer, speaker, and website publisher. www.reduceyourworkerscomp.com. Contact: mstack@reduceyourworkerscomp.com.
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