Social Security Disability Insurance, essentially the first American worker?s compensation plan, was loosely based on the Prussian system, a system which inspired the gloomy author Franz Kafka, who worked within the bureaucracy of the Prussian workers compensation system.
Modern-day workers compensation insurance has at its core the concept of no-fault insurance. The system is set set industrial accidents are going to happen no matter how careful employees are. This system was set up in order to deal with those events.
In the United States, workers comp claims are handled by state compensation boards which are created and overseen legislatively. Each state handles worker?s compensation claims differently, but all of them assign monetary amounts for various body parts and/or injuries.
American workers compensation insurance remained static up until the 1990s. ?The impetus for drastic change was the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1990.
The Americans with Disabilities Act mandated that employers make ?reasonable accommodation? for employees with disabilities. Due to the ADA, then, employees who suffered back injuries which would previously have gotten them a permanent disability, were now able to continue working due to the fact that their employers were now mandated by law to make accommodations to make their continued work possible.
Because the ADA no longer recognized many disabilities as permanent and complete disabilities, the long-accepted payment schedules no longer made sense.
In one of the most famous workers compensation cases, an employee at the Santa Fe railroad won more than a quarter million dollars as a settlement for permanent total disability under workers comp. His doctor had testified he would never be able to work again to to a back injury he acquired on the job. Less than a week and a half after the settlement, he filed a lawsuit under ADA because he said he was wrongfully terminated due to his disability which was covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The lawsuit was thrown out, of course, but this serves to illuminate the reader as to the massive changes that then had to be done.
Tags: ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, Workers Comp Insurance, Workers Compensation Insurance
Source: http://www.commercialinsurance.net/blog/?p=1041
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