National – Business Insurance recently commented on the January published paper entitled “The Opioid Crisis and Firm Skill Demand: Evidence from Job Posting Data,” Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research found that employers play a “critical role” in preventing and responding to the opioid crisis. They further found “the crisis can impose a substantial burden on businesses through lost productivity, increased health care costs and greater costs for workers’ compensation claims…it might also be harder to hire qualified workers who can pass drug screenings.”
Arizona – House Bill 2274 would add methylenedioxymethamphetamine-assisted therapy as an approved treatment protocol for firefighters and peace officers diagnosed with PTSD arising from line-of-duty incidents. As long as the medication was prescribed by a health care provider, the treatment protocol would be appropriate, even though it is considered a Schedule I drug per the federal government.
Maryland – SB 431 would create a presumption for essential workers who were diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 5, 2020, and July 15, 2021, and then were diagnosed with long COVID. Long COVID, per the bill, means lingering symptoms or conditions that continue or develop at least four weeks after an initial infection and may be multisystemic, present with a relapsing-remitting pattern and may “represent many potentially overlapping entities, likely with different biological causes and different sets of risk factors and outcomes.” The presumption would apply to government workers considered essential and unable to work remotely throughout the pandemic.
Virginia – House Bill 1226, if passed, would remove the 52-week limit on benefits for police and firefighter post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) claims. HB 1418 exempts certain rules of the Workers’ Compensation Commission from formal rulemaking requirements as long as the commission opens it up for public comment before adopting the rules. HB 205 would remove from current law a provision that prohibits employers or carriers from trying to recover payments from doctors more than one year after the date payment was made for services provided after July 1, 2014. The Commission has jurisdiction over any disputes after recoveries, but the one year from the date of payment is regardless of date.
Wisconsin – State Senator Carpenter introduced SB 934, which prohibits abusive workplace environments and allows an individual who has been subjected to such an environment to bring a civil action. Usually, workers’ compensation is an exclusive remedy of an employee against their employer for an injury sustained at work. This bill provides an exemption to that exclusive remedy provision.
Mississippi – House Bill 236 would allow firefighters, police officers and emergency medical services personnel with a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder arising from a workplace incident to receive reimbursements for paid mental health services and to take up to 30 days of paid leave time instead of filing for workers' comp as the exclusive remedy. Payments and paid leave time would be capped at $7,500 annually.
Iowa – SB 2100 would require doubling of the workers’ compensation benefits amount if the injury or death occurred when there was a violation of safety standards or child labor laws. The bill also applies monetary penalties to those employers.
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