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Welcome to your weekly WCI Newsletter. We have selected the top stories that appeared on our website this week to help you stay up to date on what is happening in the world of workers' compensation and insurance. Enjoy.
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What Would You Do For $2 Billion?
By David Langham
Yahoo reports confidently that
The Way People Buy Legal Marijuana will Change in 2019. It is an intriguing headline that belies the fact that there is no "legal" marijuana in the U.S. Marijuana is a Schedule I drug, and according to Federal law has "has no currently accepted medical treatment use in the U.S."
The U.S. has a federalist constitutional government structure. According to "
the Supremacy Clause," the U.S. Constitution, and the laws of the United States are the "the supreme law of the land," "anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding." If some substance or action is against federal law, states can not "legalize" that. If Florida passed a law legalizing the printing of currency or Georgia's legislature established restrictions on travelers from Tennessee, their actions would clearly violate the construct of American governance. Federal law would override.
Read more.
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Antibiotics as Treatment for Psyche Claim?
By WorkCompAcademy
A common antibiotic called doxycycline can disrupt the formation of negative thoughts and fears in the brain and may prove useful in treating or preventing post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to research by British and Swiss scientists.
In a specially designed trial involving 76 healthy volunteers who were given either the drug or a placebo dummy pill, those who were on doxycycline had a 60 percent lower fear response than those who were not. Read more.
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Opt-Out Model: Arkansas May Follow Lone Star State
By Angela Underwood
Opt-in or opt-out of workers' compensation is the question Sen. David Sanders (R-Little Rock) is proposing.
If passed,
SB 653 would establish an elective alternative structure to both finance and administer benefits for workers' compensation claimants separate than what exists now.
What exists now is diluted, according to Esquire Bob Buckalew, out of Little Rock. "The workers' compensation in Arkansas has been so diluted, I don't know how you can dilute it anymore," said the attorney, who has practiced for 38 years.
The notion of the bill is completely unacceptable, according to Fred Bosse, southwest vice president of American Insurance Association, based out of Washington.
Read more.
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Rousmaniere: Getting Off Opioids
By Peter Rousmaniere
The workers' comp industry became something of an opioid delivery vehicle for opioids starting in the mid 1990s. Aside from anecdotes and personal narratives of individual clinicians, little was known for years about the effect of opioid prescribing. Actuaries had not said anything about any association between opioids and the more than doubling of average claims costs.
We now learn that early prescribing opioids greatly increases the risk of dependency or addiction. And many injured workers died, though claims executives haven't revealed how many opioid-related deaths occurred. For America in whole, more than
100,000 Americans died with prescribed opioid involvement since 2000.
It took about ten years for the workers' compensation industry to fully appreciate the scope of the epidemic. We are in very roughly the fifth year of what will be a successful campaign to contain it.
Read more.
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Be Your Own Boss - Why Self-Employment is More Popular Than Ever
By Jenny Holt
According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 15 million people in the U.S. were self-employed in 2015. That's an increase of over one million from the previous year and represents over 10% of all U.S. workers.
Comprising the self-employed are freelancers, contractors, and temporary employees. These types of workers make up the so-called '
gig economy' in which workers work where and when they want and are paid for the work they do. These workers typically do not receive benefits and do not have the job security of an employee. Still, becoming self-employed is attractive to many people ranging from young entrepreneurs to retirees and also with
those recently made unemployed and who want a quick route to earning money while looking for a new job.
Read more.
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