Letters: Profiteering drives up workers’ comp costs

In his budget address, Gov. Bruce Rauner said Illinois should emulate Massachusetts’ workers’ compensation system. However, following its lead would come at a great cost to our state’s taxpayers. Massachusetts doctors who care for those injured on the job are the lowest paid in the nation, which raises concerns about access to quality care.

If Illinois cuts the rate doctors are compensated to treat injured workers to match Massachusetts’ levels, a patient’s choice of physicians will be seriously limited and wait times for treatment are sure to rise significantly.

The governor missed a chance to condemn the real problem with workers’ compensation in Illinois: insurance company profiteering. The insurance companies have exploited insufficient oversight and, since a 2011 rewrite of state law, have taken most of the savings for themselves as profits, rather than passing along their reduced cost of doing business to employers.

According to a report last year from the Illinois Department of Insurance, workers’ comp insurers saw profits jump nearly 22 points between 2010 and 2014, from negative 11 percent to positive 11 percent, while between 2011 and 2015 they reduced their financial payouts on claims to below the national average.

There are 332 insurance companies writing workers’ compensation insurance in Illinois, more than any other state. Our state is an attractive place for them to do business precisely because of insufficient oversight and laws that put their interests ahead of Illinois’ workers and employers.

Cutting benefits, lowering medical reimbursements and denying more claims only further bolsters the insurance industry’s profits. These types of cuts would shift to taxpayers, through Medicaid and other publicly funded programs, the responsibility for the resulting medical bills and income support payments.

Legislative efforts concerning workers’ comp should focus not on further eroding the rights of the injured, but on improving workplace safety and oversight of workers’ comp insurers.

Christopher T. Hurley,

president, Illinois Trial Lawyers Association

National shame

Your excellent editorial “Repeal of ACA, Medicaid Cuts Would Hurt Entire State” fails to mention that mental health and drug treatment for the poor would probably disappear under proposals to turn the ACA over to the states.

Historically we have neglected the mentally ill; as for drug addicts, we are more likely to jail them than to provide treatment. Obamacare corrected this national shame by including mental health and drug treatment as essential benefits.

A national opioid crisis claimed over 33,000 lives in 2015. With ACA repeal, about 2.8 million Americans would lose their eligibility for substance abuse treatment, including 222,000 addicted to opioids. What possible sense does it make to eliminate these desperately needed services?

It is ironic that we are facing the massive elimination of mental health and drug treatment just when we had begun to make national advances in these areas. In 2008 Congress passed The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Act requiring that eligibility and benefit levels be the same as those for medical and surgical coverage.

In 2014 it approved The Comprehensive Addiction and Care Act, including nearly $1 billion over two years, to combat our heroin crisis.

Police departments all over the nation have begun to steer heroin addicts to treatment rather than arresting them. This is primarily because the opioid epidemic has hit mostly in white communities. Regardless of the reason, it is a new era in police behavior.

Health care for all who need it is the obvious reason why we should all support the ACA or replacement. But we should also recognize that for too long the mentally ill and addicted have lived in the shadows. In the debate over Obamacare, they are the most likely to be forgotten. This must not be allowed to happen.

Rev. Alexander E. Sharp. executive director,

Clergy for a New Drug Policy

Fake promises

It is hilarious watching President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans attempt to walk back their campaign promises to deport all illegals, repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, make Mexico pay for a wall on the southern border and cut taxes.

It is becoming apparent that these promises will be significantly modified if and when they are finally implemented and that like most campaign promises they are nothing but fake promises.

Victor Darst, Huntley

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