IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/1976666553-557_4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effort to rehabilitate workers' compensation

Author

Listed:
  • Barth, P.S.

Abstract

State workers' compensation laws have been subjected to criticism since their inception; pressure to change them is now increasing. Most of the current challenge arises from dissatisfaction with the level of benefits available to disabled workers or their survivors, and, to a lesser degree, with the extent of program coverage. In response to this challenge, changes will occur that may range from reform, simply raising benefit levels and extending coverage, to program redesign, implying major structural revisions or abolishment of the system. For several reasons, including public apathy, the role of interest groups, and experience with other social insurance programs, it seems likely that basic structural shifts will not occur in the near future. While the criticism of these state laws is widespread, the problems can be dealt with in the existing framework. One area, however, could conceivably arouse sufficient public and legislative interest to upset this forecast. If it develops that the system is excluding large numbers of individuals disabled or killed by occupational diseases, workers' compensation laws could be placed in jeopardy. While evidence on this is scare, it is clear that the current system compensates only a small number of serious cases of disability arising from occupational diseases.

Suggested Citation

  • Barth, P.S., 1976. "The effort to rehabilitate workers' compensation," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 66(6), pages 553-557.
  • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1976:66:6:553-557_4
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1976:66:6:553-557_4. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.