As legal alternatives to workers’ compensation (WC) grow in number and popularity, employers will save money, and employees will—in aggregate—receive better care.
[1] As this market grows, my income will also grow.
Such forthrightness should seem unnecessary from a proponent of the opt-out movement, like me. But a vocal (
and boisterous) contingent of the opposition to alternatives avoids the necessary logical inversion by hiding behind other, less relevant motives.
As companies move away from WC, the income for opponents of alternatives will shrink, though they will never acknowledge financial well-being as a motive in opposing the opt-out. Attorneys, judges, cost-containment companies, third-party administrators, industry regulators, the NCCI and a host of other WC stakeholders
[2] veil their financial motives by redirecting the argument to “what is fair and just for the employee.” They are being disingenuous.
See Also: The Pretzel Logic on Oklahoma Option
Over time, it becomes easier to expose financially motivated WC stakeholders. But a second component of the opposition is free from poorly hidden financial agendas. This ideological group—which compels me to write this essay—claims to oppose free market alternatives on altruistic grounds. The group's members—just like their financially motivated brethren—lean quite heavily on the noble ideas that they hope are conveyed in the two-word, nebulous term "grand bargain" and that they treat as sacrosanct.
[3]
The U.S. was a little late to the WC party. Pressure had been building on policy makers since the second half of the 19th century, but it was the
Pittsburgh Survey by the Russell Sage Foundation that provided the greatest influence in the rapid adoption of WC laws in the U.S. between 1911 and 1920. Anecdotes (e.g.,
The Jungle) helped, but legislatures needed statistically compelling factual evidence to reform the legal schemes governing workplace accidents.
Crystal Eastman stood and delivered. In her seminal study,
Work-accidents and the Law (which was part of the Pittsburgh Survey and was published in 1910), Eastman gathered and reported on workplace accident data for a 12-month period between 1906 and 1907 in the small but industrially relevant sample of Allegheny County, PA. She rightly and importantly spent the first 200 pages of her study explaining the devastating effects of workplace accidents on individuals, families and communities.
[4] After dozens of case studies concerning widows, orphans and maimed workers, she dove into the problem with aplomb.
The root of the problem was that common law systems couldn’t keep up with changes stemming from the Industrial Revolution—especially those in the U.S. It’s no coincidence many countries that eventually committed to industrialization were also, to some extent, relying on English common law. From the Pittsburgh survey, Eastman summarized the problematic common law system on page 206 as follows:
- It is wasteful:
- The state expends a large amount in fruitless litigation.
- Employers expend a large amount, as the result of work accidents, only a small part of which is actually paid in settlement of accident claims.
- The injured employes [sic] spend nearly half of what they get in settlements and damages to pay the cost of fighting for it.
- It is slow; recovery is long delayed, while the need is immediate.
- It fosters misunderstanding and bitterness between employer and employees.
- It encourages both parties to dishonest methods.
- The institutions which have been resorted to as an escape from its evils, liability insurance and relief associations based upon a contract of release, are often advantageous to employers, but disadvantageous in important respects to employees.
The irony—over a century later—is too obvious. Eastman's first four points might as well be the outline for states like Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee when contemplating legal alternatives to their inefficient, caustic, modern WC systems. Granted, there was substantially more urgency for Eastman when she created this list—
deaths per 100,000 hours worked were at all-time highs. Today,
that statistic is at an all-time low. As significant as our modern occupational accident problems are, they are a different breed from—even if they are similarly described to—what Eastman studied.
Eastman’s study was so powerful that many state legislatures used it to outline their original WC laws. Stakeholders were generally agreeable to this grand bargain, which, 1) prevented employees from suing employers for common law negligence, 2) required employers to pay medical and lost income benefits for employees injured on the job and 3) removed negligence from the conversation by making the entire WC scheme “no fault” in nature.
But there are some important contextual factors that contemporary WC stakeholders forget to mention regarding the grand bargain that gave us WC to begin with. First, most states made these new-fangled WC systems optional. That’s right; of the 45 states that passed WC legislation between 1911 and 1920,
36 allowed employers to choose which system they wished to participate in. The
original Texas law—which still stands iconoclastically today—was perfectly ordinary when it was originally enacted in 1913 (it gave private employers the opportunity to subscribe to WC or stick with common law, albeit without three powerful common law defenses). When the grand bargain was being born, options were the norm.
See Also: Key Misunderstanding on Oklahoma Option
A second, forgotten characteristic of the grand bargain is how disputes—though rare—were handled. By design, attorney involvement was minimal. One of the primary goals of the grand bargain was to decrease the amount of litigation, not to recategorize and grow it. Eastman’s suggested mechanism (pp. 211-220) for dispute resolution was arbitration, which was embraced by a number of states.
[5] However, never count attorneys out. Primal due process ideals eventually compelled them to increase their involvement (and compensation), all in the name of giving clients the day in court to which they are constitutionally entitled. This aberration—attorney involvement—is now sold to the public as part and parcel of the grand bargain.
Opponents will accuse me of misinterpreting Eastman’s time and message. All interested parties are, of course, welcome to
read her study [6] and draw their own conclusions.
We invite interested parties to tour the facilities of our opt-out employers and interview employees. They can even search for hidden torture chambers filled with injured workers, but they won’t find them, because they do not exist. Our employees are happy, and our employers are delivering top-notch care to them at a fraction of the cost of WC.
But our opponents won’t accept this reality. “Facts be damned!” they cry. “The employer needs to pay full fare for WC.” That reasoning, again, is understandable from those WC stakeholders who fear they will starve if they can’t slurp from the trough of WC. Inexplicably, however, this attitude is even more pronounced among the opposition’s altruistic contingent, which maintains that employers must continue covering the inflated costs of employee welfare under WC, whether or not that financial burden improves the situation of injured employees.
Medicare presents an interesting litmus test for this ideological perspective. It is obvious to
anyone paying attention that our entitlement healthcare program for seniors could—and should—deliver better outcomes at substantially lower costs. This is self-evident to Americans of all political stripes, in large part because we all pay for those costs via taxes. We would all like to see outcomes improve and our tax burden decrease.
In both Texas nonsubscription and the Oklahoma option, we eliminate the vast majority of legal overhead, which allows us to focus on medical outcomes. The same sorts of inefficiencies and abuses that occur within Medicare also infect WC, so it shouldn’t be hard to believe that the free market (given the legal opportunity to do so) can economize them.
[7]
Yet, our vocal, altruistic opponents won’t allow their own criticisms of Medicare to influence their opinion about opt-out saving money and improving outcomes. It’s perfectly obvious that Medicare (a healthcare system rife with bureaucratic inefficiencies) could deliver better results at lower costs if it were redesigned. However, when we demonstrate that WC (a healthcare system equally rife with bureaucratic inefficiencies) could—and should—deliver better results at lower costs, they opponent of opt-out close their eyes and cover their ears. “It can’t be done!” they cry.
Somehow, from this perverse perspective, the solution to workplace injuries does not need to make the little guys (the employees) any better off, so long as it does a sufficient job of making the big guys (the employers) pay.
Ah, the joys of spending other people’s money.
This litmus test provided by Medicare shows our altruistic opponents have an unexpected hidden agenda: politics. Is such a desire—to have the employer pay more than necessary—relevant to the welfare of employees? No, it is not.
It is political. It is an impediment. It is stupid.
[8]
The grand bargain was about rationalizing what had become out-of-control non-solutions for workplace injuries. Throughout the past century, many WC systems have become burdensome for employees and employers alike. They are now, ironically, non-solutions. The grand bargain wasn’t fundamentally about WC; it was about protecting employees and employers as sensibly and pragmatically as possible. It accomplished that objective with minimal use of attorneys, while generally allowing employers to elect (or subscribe) to a statutory scheme that took the name "workmen’s compensation."
With slightly different jargon, that sounds eerily similar to what Oklahoma did in 2013. The Sooner State took a critical look at its non-solution for workplace injuries and created an alternative to more efficiently protect employer and employee alike. This statutory scheme has taken the popular name of "the Oklahoma option."
What’s next for opt-out proponents? First and foremost, Oklahoma must tend to its new creation. After that, we’ll just have to wait and see what other states will do—if anything.
What’s next for our opponents? I suspect they will not advertise their fear of losing income. They will continue to tout the grand bargain as sacrosanct, without examining the historical context from which it emerged. They will try to hide behind arguments that appear noble.
We at
WorkersCompensationOptions.com will remain at the cutting edge of this movement and will provide whatever legal occupational accident programs our clients wish to implement. Our results already speak for themselves—and they will continue to do so.
[1] If the reader is determined to think of “care” in only post-injury terms, so be it; my claim still stands. However, our idea of “care” starts with motivating employers to create the safest workplaces possible and motivating employees to avoid injuries in the first place. Because “no fault” is a cornerstone of the WC structure, our emphasis on safety is far easier to convey to our opt-out clients than to our WC clients.
[2] The panoply of stakeholders in WC (ranging from payroll auditors to
WC Medicare Set Aside reporters and from
private investigators to
coding specialists tasked with maximizing reimbursements) is quite a spectacle. To avoid overwhelming my audience, I generally categorize this excessive cast of characters into the five communities of WC: insurance, medical, legal, employer and employee. Watch the
first seven minutes of this video for an explanation of how perverse the incentives are for most of these stakeholders. Regrettably, the employer and employee have become afterthoughts in a system ostensibly designed to meet their needs.
[3] In both form and content, this article borrows heavily from the first 12 pages of John Kenneth Galbraith’s
The Affluent Society. In particular, I have modeled my discussion on his examination of “the obsolescence of ideas,” where he explains the danger of leaving “sacrosanct” concepts unexamined as a matter of convenience.
[4] Sensitive readers beware; stories of aching necks are completely ignored by Eastman in favor of gruesome accounts of deaths and dismemberments.
[5] Arbitration was much less formal a century ago. Typically, a disinterested but experienced third party would simply perform a records review and make a determination. Testimony could be heard. For a glimpse of how WC disputes were resolved in the 1920s,
see pages 88-194 of Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin 301, April 1922. The report by Carl Hookstadt details the various methods of dispute resolution for 21 states and two Canadian provinces. Voluntary resolution between employer and employee was universally sought. In its broadest sense, “arbitration”—in varying layers—successfully prevented litigation in the vast majority of cases (with the California sample offering the singular, glaring exception).
[6] I urge all industry insiders to read Eastman’s survey, as it’s fascinating, historically significant and accessible for free via the link above.
[7] While this argument is esoteric, I remind the reader we have actual results. Texas nonsubscription and the Oklahoma option are not theoretical; they are real.
[8] Reza Aslan delivered one of the greatest uses of the term “stupid” in September 2014, when interviewed on CNN.
This nine-minute video is certainly worth watching in its entirety, but, for his thoughtful and appropriate deployment of a term many of us are too cowardly to invoke, watch from 6:20 to 7:00.
