Legislators in New Hampshire introduced a bill that would penalize insurers who send out late workers’ compensation checks to injured workers. The proposed bill would have insurance companies double the amount of the payment they owe the injured worker rather than pay the fine they now face if they make a late payment.

House Bill 1451 was introduced by Representative Herb Richardson to the House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services Committee. Under the current law, insurance companies face a $2,500 fine if they send a late payment. The fine goes to the New Hampshire treasury, not the injured worker who may be relying on timely payments for their bills. HB 1451 would penalize insurers who “willfully and without good cause fail to make a timely payment”, and there would be a hearing before the penalty was imposed.

John A. Wolkowski is a workers’ compensation attorney from Manchester who says that most insurers make payments on time, but sometimes payments are delayed for weeks or even more than a month and that can be detrimental to workers.

A lobbyist from the New Hampshire Automobile Dealers Association, Ryan Hale, said that the fine was incentive enough and that the greater payouts insurers could face may increase premiums for employers. He said that his association was concerned that they might make a mistake and the state could be “overzealous” in their response.

An attorney from the Department of Labor, Rudolf Ogden, said that they rarely impose the full $2,500 penalty and prefer to correct the problem rather than punish. Ogden said that language used in the bill like “willfully” sets a high barrier against a company to pay that extra workers’ compensation expense, and doubted that the expense paid would be enough to influence premiums.

Representative Richardson is also the sponsor of House Bill 1508, which would increase workers’ compensation payments to two-thirds of a workers’ salary. There is a hearing scheduled January 31^st for that bill.

Read more from the New Hampshire Business Review.