WCDefenseCA

Happy Wednesday, dear readers!

Your humble blogger made the grave mistake of looking at recently proposed workers compensation legislation, and, as we all know, what once is seen cannot be unseen.

State Senator Tony Mendoza has introduced Senate Bill 1160, which will, among other things, lift the cap on 24 chiropractic, occupational therapy, and physical therapy visits as provided in current Labor Code section 4604.5 for physical medicine and rehabilitation services.

Seriously guys… what the heck? As the kids say these days…

Chiropractic care was limited as part of SB-899 to 24 visits, unless the defendant authorizes more visits in writing.  Why?  Because chiropractors tended to award more PD and more TD based on subjective complaints, and they tended to run up the bill on “treatment,” often with no medical gains for the injured worker but a big bill for the defendant (and all the applicant’s co-workers kept wondering “why don’t we ever get a raise?”)

This is bad news for California and yet another effort by all the folks that buy their vacation homes from the suffering of injured workers to roll back the gains made in workers’ compensation reforms.  Hopefully, the more influential players in California will catch on to the negative effects of this bill and promptly move to stomp it out.

Then again, perhaps the bill is not meant to pass, but just another DOA piece of legislation to show the voters where everyone stands.