Workers' compensation insurance

“ The economic security of working men and women has been strengthened by an extension of unemployment insurance coverage to 2.5 million ex-servicemen, 2.4 million Federal employees, and 1.2 million employees of small businesses, and by a strengthening of the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act. States have been encouraged to improve their unemployment compensation benefits, so that today average weekly benefits are 40 percent higher than in 1953.
Determined efforts have improved workers' safety standards. ”

“ Another unfortunate result of this difference is that accident compensation, being made peculiarly the task of the employers, does not develop the spirit of responsibility on the part of the workers and of coöperation between them and employers that other forms of insurance call forth, where representatives of both parties sit together in the administration of the system. ”

“ The coverage of all social security schemes continued to expand, with 17.53 million more urban workers subscribing to basic old-age insurance, 20.28 million more subscribing to basic medical insurance, and the unemployment, workers' compensation and maternity insurance steadily expanding to cover more workers. ”

“ The provision for the system is raised by contributions to the extent of nine-tenths by the employers and one-tenth by the workers, deducted from their wages. Instead of the German method by which an annual payment equal to the amount disbursed is required from each employer, he is required to provide the full amount necessary for the complete payment of the pension, this amount being placed to the credit of a special insurance fund. ”

“ I believe, the insurance companies in the United States could in a very short time know the exact amount paid by any employer of labor as a premium rate, or cost of insurance which would be necessary to protect the employer against the compensation which he in turn would be obliged to furnish to his employees. ”

“ Workmen's Compensation Insurance should be transferred to Social Security, and unscrupulous doctors, lawyers, Workmen Compensation Insurance Companies, undertakers, and other parasites, should not be allowed to consume the major part of the insurance paid to the worker who is injured at work. ”

“ At the present time, the insurance company has the privilege of selecting its risk, and the benefit of that selection affects the premium charged. Today we may insure a thousand employees of the Pressed Steel Car Company, but we will select that one thousand; the ones who are of bad habits, careless, or of bad morals we decline to take. Under the workmen's compensation, however, we would have to insure all of the employees of a given industry, good, bad and indifferent. ”

“ Others have "workmen's compensation laws" which provide that an injured workman shall receive a portion of his wages during incapacity from accident or illness. In some countries various forms of COMPULSORY STATE INSURANCE have been adopted. Germany, for example, has long had laws requiring employees to take out accident insurance and insurance against sickness, both employees and employers contributing to the insurance fund. ”

“ The rates for employers' liability insurance are already very high in those industries, and they will probably be doubled or possibly tripled or even quadrupled. It would be difficult to imagine anything which would render workmen's compensation more densely unpopular than to apply the principle exclusively to the more dangerous [83] manufacturing industries of a particular State. On the other hand, an increase in the rate payable by a dry goods merchant, for instance, might not amount to an advance on the payroll of more than one-half of 1 per cent. ”

“ Briefly, nearly every class of industrial worker is included under the Austrian law, which is administered by special territorial insurance institutions, each of them embracing Austria. particular classes of industries or workers. The institutions are managed by committees, one-third of the members of each committee being chosen by the minister of the interior, one-third by the employers and one-third by the workers. Compensation is payable, in case of accidents, on a scale proportionate to the injured person’s wages during the preceding year. ”

“ The mutual insurance portion of the workmen's compensation is that which makes it really powerful and in the end, economical and just. Every state in this country adopting a workmen's compensation law will have to provide some such arrangement before thoroughly good results can be obtained. ”

“ What the casualty insurance companies most desire is that the compensation law shall be so framed as to induce all employers, or all large employers, pretty unanimously to adopt one course or the other; that is, en masse to elect the compensation features of the law, or, en masse to reject them. Otherwise the casualty companies have to do business under two different laws, providing for two different kinds of insurance, the consequent of which is to duplicate the work and a large part of the expenses of the insurance companies. ”

“ It is true, as appellants argue, that the unemployment compensation insurance program was not based on need in the sense underlying the various welfare programs that had their genesis in the same period of economic stress a generation ago. A kind of 'need' is present in the statutory scheme for insurance, however, to the extent that any 'salary replacement' insurance fulfills a need caused by lost employment. The objective of Congress was to provide a substitute for wages lost during a period of unemployment not the fault of the employee. ”

“ Sixty-five joint-stock insurance companies did workmen's compensation business with employers having a wage-roll exceeding £600,000,000 a year, and their annual premium income in respect of the workmen's compensation risk was well over £5,000,000. Further, there were about 50 mutual indemnity associations which insured their members against the workmen's compensation risk and paid about £2,000,000 a year in compensation. The majority of employers in several of the most important industries in the country covered their risks by this means. ”

“ Of what value would a compensation law be to the workman in the State of Illinois particularly, where we have no employers' liability law, if the gate were left open for the insurance company or the mutual benefit company, or if the employer could bring in the old common law doctrine of contributory negligence, assumption of risk, and so forth? What would prevent the employer or the insurance company, if we did not repeal those laws, from bringing those in and keeping the workingman out of his compensation under a compensation law? ”

“ As to what is a dangerous employment, as to whether or not you should cover some or all, I have no doubt that there is not a man in this country, a farmer, a mechanic, a laboring man, a doctor, a lawyer or any other professional man, but what is perfectly willing to have and desires to have a fair compensation law if he can know just what it is going to cost him, and just what his insurance will cost him, in order to avoid the present uncertainties and evils that flow from existing conditions. ”

“ The employer can, however, insure himself against liability in the Royal Insurance Institute. Compensation becomes payable after the expiration of sixty Sweden. days from the date of the accident.
Russia has a law which came into force on the 1st of January 1904. Under this law employers in certain specified industries are bound to indemnify workers for incapacity of more than three days’ duration due to injury arising out of their work. Employers are exempt from liability by Russia. ”

“ Government insurance against old age, accident, sickness, and unemployment is regarded, not as the "workingmen's compensation" for injuries done them by society, but as an automatic means of forcing backward employers to economize the community's limited supply of labor power—not to wear it out too soon, not to overstrain it, not to damage it irreparably or lay it up unnecessarily for repairs, and not to leave it idle. ”

“ The present claim for liability, I repeat, arises from the workman not appreciating that he receives the premium now, and yet would make the master the insurer.
The great employers of labour will understand the change in the law and guard against it. The mischief and wrong will be in the case of men who, not knowing of the change, will go on paying the wages which include the compensation for risk, the premium of insurance, and yet find they have to pay compensation when the risk happens, and that they are insurers though they have not received the premium. ”

“ I would suggest in connection with getting the insurance rates from abroad, that we ascertain what has been the actual cost of the workmen's collective policies in the different industries and States in this country, because it will show almost absolutely what it costs to protect those men. ”

“ The amount of the compensation is either fixed by law, or adjusted to the amount of wages which the employee has been receiving, or determined by a state board. It is paid in installments, so much per week for a set period of time. In addition, an injured workman receives medical attention without any expense to himself. The employer usually arranges with a liability insurance company or with the state insurance department to pay this compensation in return for an annual premium which he remits to the company or to the insurance department as the case may be. ”

“ Regarded as optional arrangements, for acceptance or rejection by employers unwilling to comply with that clause, the plans of insurance are unexceptionable from the constitutional standpoint. Manifestly, the employee is not injuriously affected in a constitutional sense by the provisions giving to the employer an option to secure payment of the compensation in either of the modes prescribed, for there is no presumption that either will prove inadequate to safeguard the employee's interests. ”

“ Again, when you introduce a compulsory insurance system, if his institution is not up to standard, he finds he is paying three times as big a rate of premium, perhaps, as another employer in the same business, and he does not wait for accidents to happen, but takes measures at once to prevent them, and so get a present and permanent benefit in a reduction of his rate. There has nothing been found yet which will cause so effective prevention of accidents as compulsory insurance ”

“ If this worker re-joins the Labor Insurance and upon the collection of the Old-Aged Benefits, the insurer shall deduct his/her compensation received previously for the loss of years of insurance coverage and return the amount to the superior authority of the Original Authority without being subject to the restrictions set forth in Article 29 of the Labor Insurance Act, whereby the insured’s or beneficiary’s right to receive insurance pay may not be subject to transfer, offset, attachment or guarantee. ”

“ No employer in England carries his own insurance; it is all carried by some form of insurance, and so the insurance companies will have to work this matter out for themselves, and they are going to be able to do it. The better class of insurance companies have prospered under that class of insurance. The provision in the English law is, briefly, this: It provides for the payment of compensation for disability as long as the disability lasts, and in case of death it provides for payment to the children until they reach a workable age, and for the widow until she marries again. ”

“ The statute declares there shall be a conclusive presumption that both employer and employee accept its provisions, unless one of them makes written statement to the contrary. Every employer, liable to pay such compensation, unless exempted by the board, is required to insure payment in the state workmen's insurance fund or some authorized insurance company. ”

“ Under no circumstances were they to be held liable to their own employees for more than the compensation clearly fixed in the Act. Thus employers were given every reason to believe they could buy their insurance and make other business arrangements on the basis of the limited Compensation Act liability. More than that, § 33 of the Act also provides that for compensation paid an employee an employer shall himself be reimbursed or indemnified out of any money collected as a result of an employee's claim for negligent injury by a third person. ”

“ In response to renewed criticism of the overlap between the workmen's compensation and the social security disability insurance programs, Congress reexamined the problem in 1965. Data submitted to the legislative committees showed that in 35 of the 50 States, a typical worker injured in the course of his employment and eligible for both state and federal benefits received compensation for his disability in excess of his take-home pay prior to the disability. ”

“ The greatest amount of prevention and the largest amount of care exercised by employers anywhere in the world is in those countries which have compulsory or obligatory insurance laws. The reason is very simple: nearly every employer does not think that a [70] catastrophe, due to his negligence, will ever happen. But when you hold him under a compensation act for every accident, big or little, negligent or not, and accidents are happening every day, and there is a good deal of money being paid more or less continually, he will be much more careful. ”

“ Just as accident insurance goes to the beneficiary regardless of his residence, so the quasi-insurance of a workmen's compensation act goes to those to whom the employee would naturally have made such insurance payable: to himself, although an alien, if he be disabled ”