Workers’ compensation is a system of laws that provides money, benefits, and rehabilitation to employees who are injured or contract an illness in the course of their employment. It’s designed to provide some measure of safety for those who do not have access to other types of injury or illness insurance. This system has been implemented in the US since 1911 and was meant as an alternative or supplement to private medical care. The goal was to help injured workers, not to provide jobs for lawyers and doctors.
On average, workers compensation attorney Stark County Ohio costs employers $.35 per hundred dollars of payroll each year. For a large facility, this represents $300,000-$400,000 of annual costs. The good news is that the program isn’t a tax on employers as they are insured by private insurers at no cost.
Advantages of worker’s compensation
Workers’ compensation benefits are available to workers who sustain injuries or illnesses as a result of their employment-related activities:
● Workers’ compensation benefits include medical treatment,
● wage replacement (to a limited degree),
● vocational rehabilitation services,
● and other assistance such as death and burial benefit.
The benefits are designed to provide a measure of compensation for employees who have sustained an occupational injury or illness as a result of their employment.
Who Provides the Compensation?
In general, every employer that employs one or more people is legally obligated to provide workers’ compensation benefits to those employees. Workers compensation lawyer Lorain county Ohio can guide you well. The employer is required to provide medical care and rehabilitation if the employee sustains an injury at work. There are a few exceptions to this rule, however.
First and foremost, employers are not required to provide the benefits if they don’t want to do so.
Secondly, the State may opt out of coverage completely, which allows injured employees only limited benefits. A good Workers’ compensation lawyer in Lorain County Ohio can tell you what is most suitable.
Workers’ compensation is a state-regulated system of benefits. All states have their own rules and benefits levels. In some cases, the benefits levels are more generous; in others, they are less so.
Conclusion
There is one other important aspect to workers’ compensation that makes it different from other forms of insurance: it is reimbursement, not indemnification. This means that injured workers receive payment for medical care and rehabilitation costs directly from the worker’s compensation fund, and not from the employer. So while an employee who is injured may file suit against the employer if they believe negligence was involved in the injury, they do not receive any financial recovery from the employer themselves; instead, all damages would be paid by the worker’s comp fund.
