California employers and insurance companies face new laws impacting the state’s workers’ comp system operations in 2025 and beyond. Some bills were signed earlier in the session, but the fate of others wasn’t decided until the final days of the session. The most troublesome measures fell to Governor Gavin Newsom’s veto pen (see related story). …
Governor Gavin Newsom is slowly working through the hundreds of bills the California Legislature sent to his desk this year. The bills include controversial measures to create a new private sector workers’ comp presumption for farmworkers who succumb to heat-related injuries and another to require all private sector utilization review decisions to go through California-licensed …
The California Legislature has just ten days to wrap up work on numerous workers’ comp bills that are still pending this session. Heading into the final stretch legislators are continuing to push measures that would create a private sector workers’ comp presumption for farmworkers, make it a crime to deny time off to seek treatment …
The Division of Workers’ Compensation’s proposal to update California’s utilization review regulations, toughen penalties for bad actors, and introduce a new PR-1 physician reporting form generated responses from over a dozen industry representatives. Much of the feedback was about the new PR-1 form, which would combine two existing forms into one new form, which many …
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 Senate and Assembly Appropriation committees reviewed over a thousand bills last week in an up-or-down vote. Five workers’ comp bills on the suspense file were approved, albeit with amendments to a couple. A private sector presumption for heat-related illnesses among farmworkers is still in play. SB 1299 by Sen. Dave Cortese (D-Silicon Valley) cleared …
The Senate Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee passed two bills targeting contractors and the Contractors State Licensing Board. The measures would extend the sunset date for the CSLB as a state entity and would give contractors who do not have employees two more years before they must obtain workers’ comp insurance. The bills would …
California legislators faced an early hurdle to keep their 2024 bills alive and viable. Legislative rules required fiscal bills to clear the policy committees in their house of origin by last Friday. Nonfiscal bills have until this Friday to reach the floor of their house of origin. Which workers’ comp bills made it? Here is …