Masonry Magazine August 1986 Page. 24
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WORKERS COMPENSATION
continued
juries and diseases; it is not a back door form of general
health insurance.
Having made that general distinction, there remains the larger problem of applying it to individual cases. It is where the theory meets the practice that we find many legal collisions. Where is the line to be drawn? It is to this question that the large body of occupational disease case law addresses itself: the general pattern over the years has been toward a liberal interpretation of what is compensable. Thus, we find that employees pre-disposed to a certain disease may be compensated when they contract it and that employees with a pre-existing disease may be compensated for aggravation of it. The common denominator in these cases has been a finding that the employee's condition was caused by the employment, even if he or she was the only employee so affected.
The weakness in some states in the occupational disease coverage of workers compensation laws has not been the scope of what is covered-now almost everything that could be reasonably expected but rather the mechanics of filing a claim, which often nullify the intent of the law.
Most states have statutes of limitations for claim filing. These limitations, designed to preclude frivolous claims, have also prevented the filing of meritorious ones in cases when there is a long time lag between the employee's exposure to the disease-causing agent and the actual manifestation of symptoms.
The best known example of this long-latency problem is asbestosis. Asbestosis can take 20 years or more to show symptoms. One group of victims contracted the disease while working in naval shipyards during World War II. Many had long since gone on to other jobs, without exposure to asbestos, and by the time they discovered they had asbestosis, it had been argued that the statutes of limitations had long since passed.
Because of the mobility of the work force, with individual employees not only changing employments, but moving about the country, and the almost certain discovery of new occupational diseases with long periods of latency, states have begun to reform their workers compensation laws to ensure that coverage is available to workers whose diseases may be undiscovered for many years. Such reform is essential to ensure that workers compensation remains a comprehensive remedy for all the afflictions of the workplace, including occupational disease.
Are Workers Compensation Rates
Too High?
One of the questions most frequently asked of NCCI is, "Why are workers compensation rates so high?" We are tempted, in the Socratic manner, to respond with a question of our own: "How high should they be?" The "highness" of the rates is a perfect example of Einstein's theory of relativity; where the observer happens to be profoundly influences what he sees. If you are an employer paying the premiums, you see the rates from one vantage point; if you are an insurance company paying the claims, your view will be quite different; if you are a regulator trying to reconcile the two, you will have still another perspective.
But that observation obscures the valid issue the question addresses. Rates are at a certain level, whether too high for some or not high enough for others, and the question is how they got that way.
It should be understood at the outset that workers compensation is a state program. Each state has its own law and its own system of administration. On top of that, each state has its own economic and political climate. Califor-
24 MASONRY-JULY/AUGUST, 1986