California’s workers’ compensation insurance carriers saw payments for medical benefits tick up 6.8% to $4.7 billion last year, while payments for indemnity benefits climbed 5% to $4.2 billion. Growth in …
The California Legislature is in the second half of its 2024 session with active bills advancing to the second house for committee review. The active workers’ comp bills include provisions to expand temporary disability and 4850 benefits, establish a heat-illness presumption for farmworkers, and order the Contractors State Licensing Board to create a process to …
The California Legislature returns from summer break next week to finish work on a handful of workers’ comp bills. Employer representatives who have been part of last-minute workers’ comp reforms in the past, such as with SB 863 that came to light just days before the end of the session, say no surprise reform legislation …
The author of SB 636 made good on his word and amended out a provision that would have created a “duty of care” for physicians performing utilization review services for private employers in California. The bill still would require these physicians to be licensed in California, but new amendments would give employers a year to …
A handful of workers’ comp-related bills had already passed out of their houses of origin, but the majority faced a do-or-die deadline last week to clear the Assembly and Senate fiscal committees. The pending workers’ comp bills cleared the fiscal review, while some are advancing in amended form. Moving ahead of the deadline were two …
Bill introductions are complete for the first year of this two-year legislative cycle, and most workers’ compensation bills are again focused on workplace presumptions of compensability. Sprinkled among these bills are others to study gender issues, provider payments, or to require all utilization review physicians to be licensed here. Spot bills are also in the …
Governor Gavin Newsom waited until the final hours before the September 30th deadline to take action on numerous bills of interest to the workers’ comp community. Ultimately, he signed several Covid-19-related measures while vetoing two bills seeking to expand existing presumptions for skin cancer and post-traumatic stress disorders. Newsom’s support for AB 1751 by Assemblyman …
The Presumptions Wars, 2022 edition, can now be downloaded at the California Legislature’s website. On the Assembly side, there is Assembly Bill 1751 (Daly), which would extend the COVID-19 workers’ …