What Failed

In the next few weeks Governor Newsom will likely sign a raft of workers’ comp bills that were passed by the California legislature. More on that in posts to come.

But what workers’ comp bills failed this year? Let’s recap those while we wait on disposition of the bills that successfully ran the Capitol’s legislative gauntlet.

• AB 404 (Salas) (would have provided for a review of the Medical-Legal fee schedule every 2 years and indexing the MLFS; held in committee in August 2022)

• AB 2614 (Freddie Rodriguez) (would have required a CHSWC study of staffing firms’ premium shifting tactics; held in committee August 2022)

• AB 399 (Salas) (sponsored by CSIMS, this originally would have addressed problems workers have identifying MPNs and network physicians but a later amendment focused only on bill review issues; a May 2022 hearing was canceled)

• SB 213 (Cortese) (would have created rebuttable injury presumptions for hospital workers providing direct care; held in committee in June 2022)

• AB 2894 (Cooper) (would have required contractors to certify the workers’ compensation class codes endorsed on the licensee’s policy and require this information be posted on the internet; held in committee August 2022)

Other bills pertaining to workers which failed to advance were as follows:

• AB 2932 (Low) (would have changed the basic workweek from 40 hours to a 32 hour workweek; stalled in committee March 2022)

• AB 2182 (Wicks) (providing for a duty to accommodate family responsibilities; held in committee May 2022)

• AB 2095 (Kalra) (would have required large employers to submit annual statistics on a wide range of personnel information, and set up a certification program with incentives for employers who scored well on data according to a methodology to be developed ; held in committee May 2022)

• AB 1400 (Kalra) (bill to create a single payer healthcare system in California, CalCare; died in February 2022)

• AB 1651 (Kalra) (known as the Workplace Technology Accountability Act, would have imposed various duties an employers and their vendors regarding the ability to collect and use worker data; failed to advance in committee April 2022)

• SB 1149 (Leyva) (would have banned secret settlements in products liability or environmental hazard cases; failed an August 2022 vote on the California Assembly floor)

As of the date of this post, Governor Newsom has not vetoed any 2022 workers’ compensation bills.

Stay tuned.

By Julius Young

Courtesy of Workers Comp ZONE

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