OCTOBER 05 CAMPAIGN
PSYCHOLOGICAL INJURY Talking Points
Below are talking points on psychological injury. Please contact your local lawmaker and address these points with them. Ask them to return the law on psychological injury to pre-SB 50 A/2003 law. Contact your lawmaker(s) in person when possible but if you can't do it in person, email them and call them. Ask them their position on this issue and ask them to please consider what you have to say on this matter. Have family and friends do this too.
Mary
1. A psychological injury can be more limiting than a physical injury. To suggest that there can be no psychological injury from the workplace that can make a person unable to work, is naive and misleading. Serious and violent injuries are traumatic. Many people cannot overcome the fears and apprehension as a result of such an injury. Those who do overcome these traumas often need years of therapy to be able to be mainstreamed back into society.
2. People are traumatized every day in American workplaces. It could be anything from a gunman coming into the workplace and holding people hostage to an individual being assaulted on the job.
3. Psychological trauma is almost always present in loss of limb and near death injuries. It is also directly connected in cases of sexual assault, which unfortunately does occur on the job.
4. Losses that occur as a direct result of a workplace injury are also traumatic and can escalate into debiltating injuries themselves. Injuries such as loss of ability to return to your pre-injury position of employment, loss of earning ability, and permanent total disability injuries are particularly traumatic. Losing your ability to work at your trade or area of expertise is depressing and frightening. Accepting limitations that occurred as a result of your workplace injury is difficult and traumatic. These limitations not only affect your work ability but also what and how you do things at home.
5. The SB 50A law passed in 2003 that changed the definition and circumstance for psychological injury and impairment is clearly a law that once again gives comp insurers the upper hand and injured workers once again lose in the process.
6. It is apparent that comp insurers have a great deal of influence on our lawmakers. Otherwise, knowledgeable and aware lawmakers would not succumb to the pressure to pass laws that are so blatantly biased against the clientele they are intended to serve.
7. Injured workers must be actively consulted as partners in the making and reworking of laws and procedures regarding their area of unfortunate expertise. Laws against workers are typically passed in a vacuum, devoid of input, meaningful or not, from injured workers. Once again we ask that you please consult with injured workers to get more complete information about the state and conditions in the comp system. It isn't pretty. Instead it seems you consult with the people that do not have to live with the laws you pass. You never seem to speak with the people who are deeply impacted by the laws you pass. The people who have to live within the limitations and confines of this law (the injured workers) are forgotten when actual negotiations, hearings and committee work concerning the law are held.
Note: Consulting is not the same as "allowing" a couple of people three minutes of time to attempt to present facts on complex and convoluted matters to a committee that is patronizing and condescending. Consulting includes actively soliciting input from injured workers, giving them full membership privileges on committees and commissions that are examining workers compensation issues, and then treating that input with due gravity and respect.
8. The argument presented by Mary Ann Stiles, General Counsel of Associated Industries of Florida, that psychological injuries withoutphysical injuries have not been covered since 1935 is irrelevant. Psychological injuries are very real and debilitating depending on the degree of psychological trauma. The state recognizes the occurance of mental injuries in children and the elderly, in substance abusers and in clients in the community mental health system. Why not the workplace? Why not workers? Is there something intrinsically different in the mental state of a person who has a job and in a person who may not have one? Is there not the possibility of debilitating mental injury at work?
She also argues that psychological injury occurring as a result of workplace injuriy is not a comp issue because "that's what health insurance is for." Unfortunately, if you're not working, you're likely not covered by your former health insurance. You likely can't afford it any longer if you CAN get it.
The callous indifference and disregard for the workers as people by the General Counsel of one of Florida's most well-known workers compensation groups is reprehensible. It is also mirrored by many lawmakers who are cowed by AIF's power, prestige and/or finances.
9. SB 50A only allows treatment of a psychological injury IF it can be proven that at least 51% of the cause is the physical injury for which the injured worker is covered. How do you prove "51%"? How different is it than "49%"? What if the injury to the mind is far greater than the injury to the body? What if the body can heal, but the mind - left treated - does not? What if the untreated mental injjury results in the disability of a worker to the extent that she/he cannot function at the workplace? What if there were two separate workplace injuries that, taken together, caused the mental injury and yet neither by itself adds up to that magic 51%? The law allows the carrier to disallow coverage and treatment in that case. That is just plain taking advantage of a loophole in the law and the loophole must be tightened and removed.
What if it were your daughter? Where could she go for treatment support when health insurance is not an option?
This needs to be changed.