The Monterey Herald reports that about 30 people who say workers’ compensation law SB 863 has created a complicated and convoluted system expressed their frustrations in a protest outside the Workers’ Compensation offices in Salinas on Wednesday. “It is driving them down,” said Dr. David Torrez, spokesman for the protesters. “There are increases in depression, anxiety, suicide, divorce and fractured families.”

SB 863 is considered one of Gov. Jerry Brown’s landmark reforms. The bill took effect in 2013 and made wide-ranging changes to the state’s workers’ compensation system, including increased benefits to injured workers and cost-saving efficiencies, says a report by the Department of Industrial Relations and its Division of Workers’ Compensation.

Torrez said workers he sees are dissatisfied with the effects of SB 863 and “the draconian methods that various workers’ compensation insurance carriers are using to deny them some very basic medical rights and benefits.”

Gilbert Stein, a lawyer who specializes in workers’ compensation, told the crowd they were protesting in the wrong place. He said they should be protesting the law with their legislators.

Torrez is a chronic-pain specialist and marched with the other protesters. He said he was speaking for and showing his support of injured farmworkers from the Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito county areas. Torrez, who is an assistant professor at Stanford School of Medicine, says there have been complaints of major delays in the access, treatment, medication and follow-up of patients. Torrez said the processes keep the patient from getting needed treatment, therapy or medicines.

And it is getting more difficult to find doctors who accept workers’ compensation patients because, he said, of the amount of paperwork involved. “It has become punitive,” said Torrez. “The very people these laws were enacted to benefit and protect” are being hurt by them.