President Trump's FY 2019 Budget would eliminate workers' compensation reverse offsets and reform the Federal Employees' Compensation Act (FECA) Eliminate Workers’ Compensation Reverse Offset The budget proposes the elimination of the Workers’ Compensation Reverse Offset against Social Security, estimating a savings over the ten years ending FY 2028 of $207 million. This proposal has been an [...]
President Trump Signs the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 on February 9, 2018 The Act includes a repeal of language that would have expanded the authority of Medicaid State plans to seek recovery for items and services covered under Medicaid from third party payments even when the third party payments were not related to the items [...]
WASHINGTON, D.C., November 1, 2017 – Kelly Services Vice President Matt Harvill was recognized by the national association representing business in unemployment insurance and workers’ compensation law and policy. Matt Harvill served as Chairman of UWC – Strategic Services on Unemployment & Workers’ Compensation (UWC) for more than 13 years (2003 to 2016). He is the [...]
The annual Workers’ Compensation Fiscal Data Research Bulletin showing state workers’ compensation system payments and costs from 2006 to 2015 is now available for purchase. The fiscal bulletin shows the continued economic expansion and trend toward lower benefit cost rates. The number of covered workers in all states increased from 129.9 million in 2014 to 132.4 million for [...]
On June 20th , the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that Section 306(a.2) violated the non -delegation doctrine and that Section 306(a.2) is unconstitutional in its entirety. The section of the PA code held to be unconstitutional provides: The degree of impairment shall be determined based upon an evaluation by a physician who is licensed in this [...]
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released a new re-review option in the updated WCMSA User Manual on July 10, 2017. The new option is very limited. See Section 12.4 and 12.4.3 beginning on page 12-12 and continuing for the following 22 pages ending on page 12-34.https://www.cob.cms.hhs.gov/WCMSA/assets/wcmsa/userManual/WCMSAUserManual.pdf Limitations of New (Amended) Re-Review Option A [...]
On April 3rd President Trump signed HJ Res 83 disallowing OSHA regulations that were contrary to statute and expanded the period during which employers would be at risk of penalties for OSHA reporting errors. See announcement at https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/04/03/president-donald-j-trump-signs-hjres-69-hjres-83-hr-1228-sjres-34-law The rule that is being disallowed had the effect of extending to five years the statute of limitations on [...]
On March 7th The Department of Labor (DOL) submitted the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) sponsored information collection request (ICR) revision titled, ‘‘Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses,’’ to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and approval for use in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) of 1995. Public comments on the [...]
On January 4, 2017, as part of the wave of federal regulations filed late in the administration, the US DOL Office of Workers Compensation Programs released substantive rules for comment with respect to the payment of Black Lung medical benefits. The regulations generally set a new national method of determining approved medical reimbursement amounts. The changes in [...]
Comments due by October 26 The US Department of Labor on August 26, 2016 filed proposed rules for comment on the definition of minimum and maximum compensation rate annual adjustments. See https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-08-26/pdf/2016-20467.pdf The main issue in contention is that the US DOL Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs is proposing to employ the average weekly wage of [...]
