Worker’s compensation insurance in Illinois is always a heated subject. Employers, who pay the insurance premiums always complain that the rates are too high and the benefits too generous.
But workers’ compensation insurance provides essential protection to injured workers in the Chicagoland area and throughout the state. When a worker is injured on the job, and must spend months in recovery and rehabilitation, or in the worst cases, permanently disabled, without worker’s compensation insurance benefits, the future could hold bankruptcy or public assistance.
Complaints about the high-cost of workers’ compensation insurance often lack much in the way of substance. Illinois may have high rates, but that may be related to the large numbers of workers in the state and to insurance company profiteering.
There is no shortage of companies writing lines of insurance to provide this type of coverage, so it is unlikely that they view Illinois as an unprofitable state in which to do business.
And many comparisons to other states are unfair, in that there has been a concerted nationwide campaign to reduce benefits and leave workers with the injury and little or no compensation.
Some states low workers’ compensation costs may be due to the low level of coverage provided, not because they are more efficient at providing compensation at the same cost.
Fraud should never be permitted, whether by workers or employers, but that is often brought up as a “stick man” argument, to distract attention from the real issue.
Workers’ compensation benefits must be adequate to enable injured workers to recover and return to work, or if they are unable to return to work, it should prevent them from needing to resort to government programs like Social Security disability.
Source: mywebtimes.com, “GUEST COLUMN: Illinois business climate improving,” PERRY J. BROWDER, July 10, 2015
