Worker`s Injuries Essays - Employment Compensation,

Worker`s Injuries One million times a year, California workers seek help from their employers for an on-the-job injury. Most believe the state's workers compensation laws -- created at the turn of the century and overhauled four years ago -- will be a safety net. Instead, many will step into a world where, at perhaps one of the most vulnerable times in their lives, they will wander for years with little help. This is a world where doctors can earn $500 an hour writing reports, lawyers can earn $100 an hour arguing about benefits that are set by law, judges can make $85,000 a year and insurance chief executive officers can be paid $2 million a year. All while hundreds of thousands of injured workers -- among them school teachers, laborers and office workers -- face years of frustration and delays to get medical care and $39 to $490 a week. That's the California workers compensation system. And it is damaging lives. ''This system chews people up, and I don't like it,'' said Edward C. Woodward, president of the California Workers' Compensation Institute, the research arm of the insurance industry. ''This would be a scandal anyplace else in the world.'' After 1993 legislation made the most sweeping changes in workers compensation in 20 years, The Press Democrat conducted a 12-month investigation to see how well the reorganized system is serving California workers injured on the job. It found a system that serves the powerful voices of employers, insurance companies, doctors and lawyers, while workers remain unheard. Among the findings: * Benefits are the lowest in the nation for six out of 10 workers with a permanent injury. Overall, benefits are so low that California ranks 45th out of 50 states. * Injured California workers must go to court to get benefits 20 percent of the time, double the rate 12 years ago and more than four times the national average. * Insurers mishandle half their claims. In one of every five cases, the insurer won't properly notify workers of benefits, and in one of every six cases workers won't be paid all the money they're owed, according to state audits. * Fraud is overstated. While some insurance companies claim one out of three workers lie about their injuries, or 33 percent, the actual number of fraud cases sent to prosecutors is less than 1 out of 100, or less than 1 percent. * The state has one information counselor for every 20,000 workers comp cases, symptomatic of a bureaucracy that greets half of worker calls with a busy signal and can't even say how many claims are filed each year. * No state agency regularly monitors claims to see, for instance, whether insurance payments are received on time or whether injured workers are receiving appropriate medical care. Conflict and confusion To assess how claims are handled, The Press Democrat conducted the first-ever media analysis of state computer data, analyzing 26,400 North Coast workers compensation claims covering six years, as well as another 77,800 cases in central and southern California at the Santa Barbara and Long Beach appeals boards. It found that conflict and confusion are imbedded in a system that is taking longer to resolve disputed cases every year, while the number of disputed claims is increasing faster than the growth in the work force. One out of five injured workers will spend almost three years struggling with claims adjusters and doctors and lawyers to get the benefits they are guaranteed by law. The nature of claims is changing as well, moving from warehouse to office with a growing number of cumulative strain injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome, which are more difficult to assess and harder to quantify. ''I wouldn't want to be an injured worker in this system, due in huge part to the inherent complexity, subjectivity and inefficiency,'' said Doug Widtfeldt, vice president of the Association of California Insurance Companies. ''Delays and disputes are an endemic problem.'' The California program -- funded by employers and run by insurance companies, or employers who self-insure -- covers 13 million workers, almost twice New York or Texas. Every year, it costs employers roughly $8 billion, pays insurance companies about $1 billion in profits, pays doctors and medical providers $2 billion for medical care, pays workers $2 billion, and spends the rest on administration. And it makes everyone unhappy. Worker's comp in California is an equal-opportunity headache. Employers worry about costs. They resent workers who take advantage of the system. They resent insurance companies that make generous profits. They wonder how they

Sociology Research Method essays

Sociology Research Method essays Sociology is the scientific study of human social behavior. As the study of humans in their collective aspect, sociology is concerned with all group activities: economic, social, political, and religious. Sociologists are the researchers of sociology. Sociologist study such areas as bureaucracy, community, deviant behavior, family, public opinion, social change, social mobility, social stratification, and such specific problems as crime, divorce, child abuse, and substance addiction. Sociology tries to determine the laws governing human behavior in social contexts. Sociology focuses on how groups affect the individual. There are many factors that play a role in sociology such as , ethnic background , gender and peers. I find the ways we research and study sociology to be very interesting. I will explain how it is done by sociologists. The ways sociology is researched is by the scientific research method. The scientific research method is pretty standard for most scientific exploration. The scientific research method is a method of posing and answering questions that relies on clear, objective guidelines for gathering and interpreting observable evidence. The steps to the scientific method are as follows. First, of all you are going to want to find to what question of sociology you would like to find the answer. This first step is called defining the problem. When defining the problem, you decide what the purpose of the study is. At this stage in the research you are also trying to figure out what information is needed and how it will be used. Next, you are going to want to review previous research. In this step you will find out what studies have been done on this topic, and what additional information you will be need to gather. After the research is done your going to want to state a hypothesis as to the outcome of the experiment. Technically speaking, the hypothesis is a statement that predicts a relationship betw ...

Ottoman Empire Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Ottoman Empire - Essay Example It should be noted that Ottoman Empire was made up from different ethnic groups such as Turks, Arabs, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgars, Armenians, Assyrians and Kurds. Moreover, different communities of Christian religion and Jews were existed in the Ottoman Empire. However, Ottomans never tried to inject Islamic beliefs and principles among people of other religions. In fact, Turkey under ottomans did succeed in isolating religion from politics (McCarthy, p.217). In other words, the tolerance shown towards other religions is definitely a legacy left behind by the Ottomans. For example, at present, Turkey is believed to be the most secular country in the Arab world. Moreover, no other Islamic country is currently successful in implementing democracy as Turkey does. As a result of that, Turkey is very close to acquire a permanent membership in EU which would further enhance their possibilities of economic progress. According to McCarthy (p.217), the Ottoman Empire was successful in improving the transportation and communication infrastructure. They built roads, railroads, and telegraph lines as a measure to improve the economic activities inside their territories. At the same time, they made plenty of architectural wonders which are still reminding the aesthetic legacy left behind by them. Plenty of mosques and buildings that were constructed by the Ottomans are still available in Arab countries such as Turkey, Balkans, Hungary, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria. The institutional and structural reforms undertaken by Ottoman Empire are still relevant. The bureaucratic traditions and the structural reforms undertaken by the Ottoman did continue in the Arab world even after the Ottoman era. Centralized control was the major ideal of bureaucratic reforms under Ottomans (McCarthy, p.216). In other words, bureaucrats were accountable for the activities done by them, under the Ottoman Empire. It should be noted that