The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Economic Freedom released today The Lone Star State Model for Helping Injured Workers by Bill Peacock and Stanley Greer. The paper examines the effectiveness of both Texas’ workers’ compensation and private sector work-injury benefit systems. It finds that both systems work well in comparison to mandatory systems in other states. It also finds, in contrast to the concerns of the U.S. Department of Labor, that employees and employers are better off under the Texas private sector work-injury benefit system, with improved claims handling, cost control, and return to work rates of injured employees.
“Texas’ private sector injured workers benefit system has benefitted employers and employees,” said Peacock. “Competition from private sector work-injury benefit plans has caused dramatic improvement in Texas’ regulated workers’ compensation system. The Department of Labor’s current efforts to constrain Texas’ unique voluntary system will harm, rather than help, Texas workers. The Trump Administration should bring to an end the department’s unwarranted actions against Texas initiated by the previous administration.”
Greer added: “The best available evidence shows that Texas businesses as a group and those with private work-injury benefit plans in particular do a far better job than most of their counterparts around the country at preventing serious accidents and, when necessary, addressing the needs of injured employees at a reasonable cost.”
To read the full report, visit:
http://www.texaspolicy.com/content/detail/the-lone-star-state-model-for-helping-injured-workers
Bill Peacock is vice president of research and director of the Center for Economic Freedom at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Stanley Greer is the senior research associate for the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR), based in Springfield, Virginia.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit free-market research institute based in Austin.
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