How lobbyists are selling lump-sum buyouts

This video depicts the kind of conversation that could be happening right now in Olympia as business lobbyists aggressively push ESB 5566, which would allow “compromise-and-release” lump-sum buyouts in Washington’s workers’ compensation system.

Watch it and then TAKE ACTION by calling the Legislative Hotline at 1-800-562-6000 and telling your legislators to OPPOSE ESB 5566 and other compromise-and-release proposals!

Short URL: https://www.thestand.org/?p=254

Posted by David Groves on Apr 23 2011. Filed under STATE GOVERNMENT, TAKE A STAND!, VIDEOS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

1 Comment for “How lobbyists are selling lump-sum buyouts”

1. 

   roseviolet

   May 1, 2011 - 4:39 pm

   Anyone who cares about workers MUST write, call, email or otherwise contact their Legislative representatives to let them know that this isn’t a good idea – that this is NOT at all in the interests of workers.

   I came to WA from a state where this was common practice. What they don’t tell you as they (and it is THEY because even your own attorney will encourage a compromise and release settlement) push toward C&R is that they have no REAL or HONEST idea how your injury or injuries will impact your future – none. Nor do they even begin to take into account the increases we keep facing in the cost of medical care. They can estimate approximately how disabled you are at the time, but that’s about it. Telling me, for example, that I was about 10 percent disabled in a knee didn’t begin to tell me that 20 years later I’d be looking at stuff like bursitis, arthritis, surgeries (stuff not even my own independent doctor at the time was mentioning as a worst case future scenario) and spending my life using at least a cane. The C&R settlement I was pushed into – had I had the foresight to set it aside for medical care – wouldn’t have even begun to pay for office visits. I MIGHT have paid for one MRI. They didn’t do me any favors – but they saved my former employer and his worker’s comp company a LOT of money and it made sure my attorney got a payment quickly. I saw this play out time and time again in that state, sometimes more or less dramatically but generally something like what happened to me (and even when the injured had the sense to set the money aside).

   We do NOT want C&R. For workers it is a VERY bad idea.

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