According to Advisen’s Loss Insight database, the services industries has accounted for an increasingly larger share of violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act since 2007, while mining and construction experienced the biggest increase since 2013. Two industry groups–wholesale and retail trade, and finance, insurance and real estate–have seen dramatic diminutions in violations of the civil rights statute.
ADA prohibits discrimination against the disabled and entitles them to reasonable accommodation by employers. Congress substantially widened the definition of “disability” in 2008 to encompass more work-related injuries. The most common among these is musculoskeletal and involves the back, with nine out 10 of the injuries becoming chronic.
Workers’ compensation is a form of insurance providing wage replacement and medical benefits to employees injured in the course of employment, in exchange for mandatory relinquishment of the employee’s right to sue his or her employer for the tort of negligence. The tradeoff is known as “the compensation bargain.”
Insurance policies are available to employers through commercial insurance companies: If the employer is deemed an excessive risk to insure at market rates, it can obtain coverage through an assigned-risk program. There are public uninsured employer funds in many states to pay benefits to workers employed by companies who have illegally failed to purchase the insurance.
The workers’ compensation system is administered on a state-by-state basis, with a state governing board overseeing varying public/private combinations of workers’ compensation systems.
The graph shows the trend in average premium paid at renewal by commercial lines insurance buyers for large and mid-sized companies.
The blue line shows that the average cost of workers comp insurance for companies with less than $250 million in annual sales has been relatively steady since 2009. The orange line shows the higher average cost for companies with more than $250 million in sales, and the top two lines show the average premium cost each group pays for a composite of individual lines of business insurance.
The table shows that 60 percent of workers compensation claims result in a loss of less than $10,000, while 20 percent result in a loss of more than $100,000.
The map show that workers compensation claims predominate in California, Texas and Illinois.
