By The California Applicants’ Attorneys Association | January 3, 2022
Consider how California’s policies, laws and institutions have perverted Workers’ Compensation into an ageist system where the insurers collect more and pay out less the longer an employee has been on the job.
- Workers’ Compensation premiums are calculated on $x per $100 of payroll.
- Longer tenured employees are generally paid at a higher rate as a reward for their years of services.
- That means that higher premiums are collected by the insurer for employees with longer tenure.
But those higher paid premiums aren’t factored in when the longer-tenured worker gets hurt on the job and their benefits for that injury are reduced arbitrarily simply based on their age…and nothing else… no prior injury, no history of damage to the recently injured part of their body.
All they did wrong was spend years doing a good job.
But it’s even more perverse when you consider that according to “The Impact of Claimant Age on Late-Term Medical Costs,” a study from the NCCI, claimants older than 60 years of age actually have lower costs associated with late-term workers’ compensation claims.
They call this Orwellian system of reducing benefits for older injured workers and increasing profits for the insurers “apportionment.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights calls it something else:
“Ageism is so widespread and accepted… in policies, laws and institutions…it is a deep-rooted human rights violation.”
