The brinksmanship continues in Illinois. A moderately effective reform bill passed the senate but has been defeated in the house by Republicans, who seek stronger ways to limit compensability. As a result, the Dems are moving forward with the Doomsday option: a bill to abolish workers comp and send each and every claim into the court system. Wow, that’s one way to make everyone miserable, above all, injured workers looking for a reliable safety net.
Among other things, the defeated reform bill would have reduced the medical fee schedule by 30 percent, thereby saving (theoretically) $500m to $700m per year. The reduction sounds harsh, but in practice, fee schedules are fluid. For top specialists, the fees are almost always negotiated upward; for run-of-the-mill practitioners – or the Dr. Feelgoods with their pockets full of pills – they can take it or leave it. Lowered fee schedules provide payers with leverage to find the best available doctors – not necessarily a bad thing.
Who Blinks?
At the moment, legislators are playing a classic game of chicken: if we can’t reach agreement on reforms, we’ll blow the whole thing up. Given that Democrats are behind the Doomsday option, I doubt they will allow things to reach that point, as it would be a disaster for workers. But they are running out of time.
The potential good news for Illinois employers (and there isn’t much when it comes to comp) is that even the modest changes in the reform bill will begin to reduce the cost of workers comp, currently the third highest in the nation. The bad news is that further reforms will be needed, most of all, perhaps, involving the de-politicizing of comp in a hyper-political state. My advice to the legislators is simple: take it incrementally. Pass the reform bill pretty much as is and revisit the issue in the next session. In this precarious situation, half a loaf is better than none.
