Gov. Haslam has declared his intentions to reform the system within the state.
Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam has announced that he will be dedicating himself to overhauling the workers compensation coverage system in the state.
This is an area that has held the governor’s attention for some time and he has chosen now to make the changes.
Governor Haslam’s administration has now proposed changes to the laws for workers compensation within Tennessee. These proposals suggest that an independent agency should be created in this sector. The purpose of that agency would be specifically for overseeing the operation, function, and judgments of the system.
This would include the workers compensation appeals that are currently being heard by the state courts.
This workers compensation system proposal is one of the numerous considerable changes that are being proposed by Haslam. He made this announcement during his “state of the state” speech in which he presented his annual budget plan. He has said that he is seeking to move forward with a dramatically altered system in Tennessee.
He referred to the overhauled workers compensation plan as being a significant improvement over the current system that he called litigious, bureaucratic, costly, and inconsistent. He feels confident that this is a vital change that is long overdue in the state.
Though he feels confident with this change, this workers compensation overhaul proposal is not without controversy. Critics to these reforms have stated that the proposed changes would cause the unfair curtailing of the rights and the compensations that are available to employees who have been injured while on the job.
That said, Haslam has still noted that the workers compensation system is among the priorities that are held at the very top of the list in the Tennessee legislative session for this year. The new budget was presented on Monday, and also included the governor’s intentions to have the state participate in the expansion of Medicaid under the federal healthcare overhaul. In that plan, the state would pay the full cost for the system for its first three years, but that portion would drop to 90 percent after that time.
