If you live in a state where Bill Minick and his company Partnersource has done its dirty work, your employer can opt out of Worker's Compensation plan and replace it with one designed by Minick — he also writes state laws defining the terms for private replacements to Worker's Comp — and backstopped by his wife Dr. Melissa Ton's medical practice, who gets to decide whether you deserve treatment. If she denies your claims, Minick's company makes more money.
Minick's pitch goes like this: eliminate worker's comp and companies will save money while providing more benefits and rooting out benefits cheats. The reality is that under Minick's system; supervisors get to accompany workers to the doctor's office; employers can deny claims if for employees who seek a second opinion or take more than 24 hours to initiate a claim; employees who are permanently disabled can have their benefits arbitrarily capped.
Minick maintains that while his system allows for these abuses, they're checked by the power of employees to sue their employers for bad behavior. But in the absence of Worker's Comp, employers limits employees' legal choices through dirty tricks like requiring them to sign away their right to sue while they are bleeding on stretchers in an emergency room; or limiting their recourse for bad employer actions to appeal conducted by a firm or committee chosen and paid for by employers.
What happens to employees who are crippled by their employers when employers are let off the hook for it? The taxpayer foots the bill.
Amador, a nursing assistant, was helping a patient transfer to a wheelchair at a Stephenville, Texas, nursing home in November 2013, when the chair's brake unlocked, causing her to support the patient's weight.
"I felt like a pinch in my back and I thought well, it's been a long day, I'm tired," said Amador, then 51. "So I paid no mind to it. I figured it would go away. Usually it goes away."
She took a hot shower and went to bed. By the next morning, she remembers being in so much pain she could hardly breathe.
As soon as she got to work, Amador told her supervisor, who sent her to the hospital. Only 19 hours had passed. But her employer, Fundamental Long Term Care, rejected her claim, saying she had failed to report it by the end of her shift.
The company's decision left Amador in a Catch-22. Even though her injury happened at work, the company's Texas plan wouldn't cover it. But because it was work-related, neither would her health insurance or short-term disability plan. Had she worked for Fundamental in one of the other states where it operates, her injury would have been covered under workers' comp.
Amador sought help at a publicly funded health clinic, where her doctor recommended a specialist. But she couldn't afford one. She tried light-duty work until her doctor warned she could do further damage.
Since then, Amador said, she's been living off her son's Social Security benefits and borrowing from a lawsuit settlement fund set up for him after his father died of mesothelioma. Her daughters help pay for medications, and she's applying for Social Security disability.
Inside Corporate America's Campaign to Ditch Workers' Comp
[Michael Grabell, ProPublica, and Howard Berkes, NPR]
