Workers' Compensation Reform Puts Unreasonabile Restrictions on Florida injured and their attorneys
Palm Beach Post columnist Tom Blackburn, a favorite of ours at the North Carolina Workers' Compensation Law Blog, takes legislators in Florida to task for passing a new workers' compensation reform law that will make it harder for injured workers to get legal representation. The new legislation strengthens a 2003 law that established a "reasonable" fee schedule for attorneys representing injured workers. The new law strikes the word "reasonable."
In his column, Blackburn explains that by setting an unreasonable fee schedule for attorneys who represent injured people in their workers' comp claims, Florida is guaranteeing that more and more deserving people will be denied medical benefits and financial compensation.
When the fee schedule was put in place:
the percentage of claims denied by insurers rose from one-fourth to more than one-third of all claims. The percent of cases in which the injured worker appealed the denial dropped considerably...
After the 2003 law change that made it harder to fight a denial of benefits, the insurance companies began deciding that 35 percent of the employees who get hurt in Florida had only an ouchie when they broke their arm or are trying to turn a hangnail into prostate cancer or are generally malingering.