Texas is the only state that does not mandate that employers carry workers' compensation insurance (WC) coverage. We employ a quasi-experimental design paired with a novel machine learning approach to examine the effects of switching from traditional workers' compensation to a so-called non-subscription program in Texas. Specifically, we compare before and after effects of switching to non-subscription for employees in Texas to contemporaneously measured before and after differences for non-Texas-based employees. Importantly, we study large self-insured companies operating the same business in multiple states in the US; hence the non-Texas operations represent the control sites for the Texas treatment sites. The resulting difference-in-differences estimation technique allows us to control for any companywide factors that might be confounded with switching to non-subscription. Our empirical approach also controls for injury characteristics, employment characteristics, industry, and individual characteristics such as gender, age, number of dependents, and marital status. Outcomes include number of claims reported, medical expenditures, indemnity payments, time to return to work, likelihood of having permanent disability, likelihood of claim denial, and likelihood of litigation. The data include 25 switcher companies between the years 2004 and 2016, yielding 846,376 injury incidents. Regression findings suggest that indemnity, medical payments, and work-loss fall substantially. Claim denials increase and litigation falls.

The Director of Workers' Compensation Passbook(R) prepares you for your test by allowing you to take practice exams in the subjects you need to study. It provides hundreds of questions and answers in the areas that will likely be covered on your upcoming exam, including but not limited to: administrative techniques and practices; educating and interacting with the public; preparing written material; understanding tabular material; laws, rules and regulations related to workers' compensation; and more.

This book serves as the perfect marriage between workers¿ compensation theory and practice. While the book covers most of the traditional areas of workers¿ compensation doctrine, it also dwells at strategic points to reflect upon the letter of the law. It dares to question doctrine and¿more importantly¿encourages even the beginning student of workers¿ compensation to do more than passively receive rules. The author draws on his real world experience as a former injured worker and workers¿ compensation attorney, and supplements that experience with his theoretical perspective as a teacher and scholar of administrative and employment law. The student is guided through cases by the use of probing introductory questions, reflection sections at the conclusion of many of the cases, and running commentary and ¿interrogation¿ by way of text boxes at critical junctures in the cases. The student becomes acquainted with a fictional injured worker, Ann Smith, early in the book and has the opportunity to reflect upon legally significant developments as her case becomes increasingly complex. In the final, problem-solving chapter titled ¿In the Law Office,¿ students are introduced to materials from actual cases, demonstrating even more concretely how the principles they are learning are applied in practice. The resulting product is a natural fit with other titles in the Context and Practice Series. Students are introduced to a body of law through explicit engagement with it, and through exercises and commentary meant to refine their understanding through contextual interaction with black letter rules.

All across America's workplaces; workers are being injured, killed or exposed to toxic chemicals from which they are dying. An estimated 66,000 persons die each year from occupational illnesses and injuries in our country: An epidemic of monumental proportions. Almost a century after the introduction of Workers' Compensation; workers, their families, communities all pay the price for the devastating human and environmental consequences of this failure to hold corporations accountable for their actions. The stories in Depraved Indifference are the stories of ordinary people. Discarded and forgotten by their employers, denied medical coverage by the workers' compensation insurers; many have been left to die, slowly and agonizingly, unnoticed by all but the ones who really care - their grieving families. Depraved Indifference represents over five years of research and interviews. It lays bare a Workers' Compensation system that cavalierly exposes workers to severe injury, toxic exposure and death; while throwing the major cost unto the family and the taxpayer, without fear of lawsuit, prosecution or even public outcry. It is a call to action. Depraved Indifference by Patrice Woeppel is a well researched look at the failure of workers' compensation laws to deliver the promise of fast, sure and adequate benefits based upon a no fault approach to compensating on-the-job injury and death. The author makes the case that miniscule benefits, the ability to starve out injured workers and their families, the lack of official oversight, the lack of meaningful penalties for violations and the lack of any criminal prosecution of employers for criminal acts of depraved indifference to human life, make for an unsafe workplace for millions of Americans. The numbers are staggering. It is an epidemic of death and economic destruction in the American workplace, unchecked by trial by jury to bring wrongdoers to the bar of justice. -Mark L. Zientz, Esq. Woeppel explains the problem and also lays out a solution " Depraved Indifference: The Workers' Compensation System is a scholarly look at the American workers' compensation laws and how they are unjust for today's world filled with high risk jobs and deadly chemicals that many must work with almost daily. With a suggested reform model presented, Woeppel explains the problem and also lays out a solution, giving Depraved Indifference a critical recommendation. -James Andrew, Midwest Book Review The workers' compensation system does more to protect corporations than injured workers, according to this well-researched analysis that draws on a number of actual cases, including the author's own experience after an injury while working in a hospital. The final chapter gives her prescription for reform. -Matt Witt, City University of New York, New Labor Forum, Vol. 18, No. 2: Spring, 2009. Depraved Indifference: The Workers' Compensation System is the best book on workers' compensation in thirty years. -Daniel M. Berman, Ph.D., author of Death On the Job: Occupational Health and Safety Struggles in the United States.