The Workers’ Compensation Research Institute (WCRI) released a study that suggests that employees injured at work are more likely to file under workers’ compensation instead of group health insurance when their group health plan has a higher deductible. The number of workers in health insurance plans with high deductibles is growing.
They found that injured workers are 1.4% more likely to file a workers’ comp claim if they have a remaining group health deductible of $550 or more, versus employees who have no deductible at the time of injury. This amounts to a 5.3% increase in comp claim volume.
The increase in soft-tissue workers’ comp claims was much larger than comp claims relating to trauma and found an overall filing increase of 6.2% for those types of conditions between 2008 and 2014, and an increase of 3.3% between 2014 and 2017. The number of comp filings for trauma injuries in response to larger deductibles was 1.5% between 2008 and 2014, and then 0.6% between 2014 and 2017.
States who saw the biggest increase in comp coverage filings seemed to be those where employees can choose their initial provider. Authors of the study thought this may be due to an employee’s ability to see their own doctor for their injuries, lowering the cost to them of filing a comp claim. The authors also say results show that workers are not “forward looking” when making comp filing decisions and are more worried about out-of-pocket costs at the time of their injury. It seems workers are more inclined to seek comp coverage to avoid out-of-pocket costs when they are “facing a substantial financial burden” in deductibles.
“In the past, workers may have chosen to have a work injury covered within their group health plan. But, the increasing cost of deductibles may cause them to consider having the injury covered – where it potentially belongs – in the workers’ compensation system, where there are no deductibles or copayments for the medical care they receive,” said John Ruser, President and CEO of WCRI.
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