Category: Daily News

Governor Brown vetoed a bill (AB 305) that would have prohibited medical problems primarily affecting women from being considered pre-existing conditions when calculating workers’ compensation permanent disability and apportionment. The veto was made after signing legislation to give California women the strongest equal-pay protection in the nation.

This bill attempted to prohibit apportionment if pregnancy or menopause is contemporaneous with the injured worker’s claimed injury. This bill also required that breast cancer not be less than the comparable impairment rating for prostate cancer. It also tried to prohibit apportionment in cases of psychiatric injury caused by sexual harassment or any of the conditions listed above if the conditions are contemporaneous with the psychiatric injury. Senate Floor Amendments of 9/3/15 remove “osteoporosis casually related to menopause” from the list of conditions where apportionment would have been prohibited.

According to state Sen. Marty Block (D-San Diego), the bill was part of an effort to end gender bias in the workplace. Some proponents of the bill have argued that the AMA Guides are not objective, specifically in the area of gender-specific injuries. Specifically, proponents point to the fact that the AMA Guides rate the removal of female breasts at a WPI of 0%, while the removal of a prostate would rate a 16%-20% WPI, arguing that such a rating shows bias against women.

Opponents argued that AB 305 was an attempt to undermine an employer’s use of apportionment when determining liability for permanent disability awards. Specifically, opponents noted that apportionment is more than a decade old and ensures that employers do not need to pay for non-industrial injuries. Further, opponents pointed to case law and statute which protects injured workers from abusive apportionment, including apportionment on the basis of gender. Opponents further argue that AB 305 will increase litigation, raise indemnity costs on employers, and increase systemic instability and subjectivity.

The Democratic governor’s veto message said “The workers compensation system must be free of gender-bias. No group should receive less in benefits because of an immutable characteristic. However, this bill is based on a misunderstanding of the American Medical Associations’ evidence-based standard which is the foundation of the permanent disability ratings, and replaces it with an ill-defined and unscientific standard.”

A researcher at McGill University in Quebec says her study of treadmill workstations show them to be potentially more beneficial and able to help diminish work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Kinesiology researchers are studying ways to reduce or even prevent muscular and skeletal stresses and pains. The study as summarized in Reuters Health shows that walking while working on a computer may lead to healthier muscular patterns. The research was published this year in the European Journal of Applied Physiology.

“There are studies recently that show that you lose weight because you would exert more calories, but we were more interested in knowing about the muscles that do the work. The muscles in the neck/shoulder region are the ones that feel the pain and experience fatigue,” says Julie Cote, an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education whose research focuses on biomechanics and ergonomics.

Cote’s lab asked 20 healthy participants to complete a 90-minute typing task on a computer while sitting or walking on a treadmill. This typing task measured both speed and accuracy. “We found out that in terms of performance – typing performance – there was no difference between how fast or how many mistakes people were making whether they were walking or seated,” said Cote.

For the experiment, they placed electrodes on certain parts of the body to measure muscle activity in the neck, shoulders, forearms, wrists and lower back. Cote said the electrodes collected three points of data – blood flow, muscle activity and movement or posture – with the help of motion capture. Her lab asked participants to rate their level of discomfort while performing tasks. Results showed that upper limb discomfort was higher when the subjects were sitting and increased the longer they sat.

“We found in terms of muscle activity there were patterns that seemed to be healthier in the neck and shoulder while people were walking,” said Cote. They discovered that there was lower, but more variable, muscle activity when subjects were walking compared with sitting, all of which translated into less discomfort. When people were walking, “the muscles worked together in a more independent way,” said Cote

Cote’s lab is in the process of preparing results of desk standing versus sitting, to submit for publication, but she is already convinced that the former is healthier for workers. “What I can say in terms of performance, people seem to be performing better when they were standing,” said Cote.

A Santa Clara County correctional deputy was arrested Friday in San Jose and charged with workers’ compensation fraud according to officials from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, which oversees the county jails.

An arrest warrant was executed for Santa Clara County Correctional Deputy Mark Navarrete, who is accused of workers’ compensation fraud and allegedly violating California Penal Code 550(a)(1) and Insurance Code 1871.4 (a)(1) and (2). Both are felonies. Navarrete sustained an off-duty injury playing softball but officials allege he fraudulently filed claims that his injury occurred in the workplace while on duty. Officials say Navarette has been on paid administrative leave since September 17. He was a member of the sheriff’s office for more than 10 years, Navarette was booked into Santa Clara County Main Jail.

The arrest was part of a widening array of internal investigations magnified by the beating death of a mentally ill inmate. The Navarrete case predates the investigation into the deadly Aug. 26 beating of Michael Tyree at the Main Jail, which spurred murder charges against three other correctional deputies and prompted elected officials to promise a host of reforms of the county’s jail facilities, with pointed attention at misconduct by jail staffers.

To date, five correctional deputies — including the three in the Tyree case –have been arrested, and three more are on leave in connection with criminal investigations launched by the Sheriff’s Office based on alleged misconduct.  All eight officers — including the local correctional officers’ union president — are on paid administrative leave. More arrests could follow: Smith said this week that detectives are reviewing more than 100 complaints — for use of force or otherwise — filed since Tyree died.

Because of uncertainty about who might get caught in what officials admit is a wide investigatory net, the agency has taken several extraordinary steps that include moving key investigators out of the sheriff’s headquarters to an off-site location to physically restrict access to sensitive intelligence.

A West Sacramento woman has pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a case that involved filing false workers’ compensation claims for a former National Football League player. Kimberly Jones, 40, entered the plea and agreed to submit to a restitution order of at least $1.5 million, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office news release.

Court documents indicate that from September 2001 through August 2011, Jones was employed as a senior claims representative, or claims adjuster for a third-party administrator that managed, among other things, workers’ compensation claims in California on behalf of Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association Insurance Group, or PMA.

Jones’ co-defendant, Marcus Buckley, 42, of Weatherford, Texas, played professional football in the National Football League between 1993 and 1999 with the New York Giants. During this time, the Giants had workers’ compensation insurance coverage through PMA.

In 2006, Buckley filed a worker’s compensation claim against the Giants for cumulative stress injuries sustained while playing football, in part, in California. In November 2010, the claim was settled for $300,000.

After his claims had been settled, however, between late 2010 and June 2011, Buckley allegedly prepared and filed numerous additional requests for reimbursement under his closed claim. He prepared fictitious invoices and statements from medical providers for medical services purportedly provided to him and fictitious credit collection notices from collection agencies purportedly seeking payment from Buckley for past due medical bills. Buckley sent the fictitious invoices, statements, and credit collection letters to Jones who had checks made payable to Buckley. In total, Buckley received more than $1,588,000 to which he was not entitled.

Charges against Buckley are pending. Jones it to be sentenced January 7 2016 and faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss in the case, and a three-year term of supervised release. This case is the product of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant United States Attorney Michael M. Beckwith is prosecuting the case.

The powerful pharmaceutical industry is doing its best to hold back the tide, but mounting public outrage over excessive pricing of both old and new drugs may prompt government intervention. The controversy is already playing out on the presidential campaign trail and on Capitol Hill where House Democrats are demanding Valeant Pharmaceuticals provide documentation to justify the soaring costs of its drugs.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign purchased ads in Iowa and New Hampshire this week on the topic of her role in forcing Turing Pharmaceuticals, to partially roll back massive price increases. Clinton accused the company’s 32-year old CEO, Martin Shkreli, of “price gouging” on Twitter.

Billionaire Donald Trump, the GOP presidential frontrunner, also jumped into the act, calling Shkreli a “spoiled brat” for boosting the cost of the drug, Daraprim, from $13.50 to $750 a pill.

Shkreli, a hedge fund manager, has become the new symbol of industry greed and insensitivity. He recently announced he would cut back the price, without saying by how much.

At one time critics focused much of their wrath on Gilead Sciences Inc., the California based pharmaceutical company that charged as much as $1,000 a pill for the new wonder drug Sovaldi for treating the potentially lethal Hepatitis-C virus. The cost of the drug blew a hole in the budgets of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Medicare and Medicaid and forced federal and state officials to ration the availability of the popular drug.

Now industry critics have two easy targets to choose from – including Turing and Valeant, a major firm that jacked up the price of two heart medicines three to six fold the same day it acquired the rights. In both cases, the companies weren’t marketing newly developed drugs, which may have cost tens of millions of dollars to develop but drugs that have been on the market for many decades – making it far more difficult to justify a huge increase in price.

All 18 Democratic members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have asked the GOP chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), to subpoena Valeant and compel company officials to provide documents justifying its price increases, according to the Washington Post. Democrats want Shkreli and Michael Pearson, the Valeant CEO, to testify before the committee.

The company earlier this month refused to respond to a request from Democratic Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to explain the decision to raise the prices of Nitropress, a drug used to treat congestive heart failure, and Isuprel, a drug used to treat irregular heart rhythms.

PhRMA, the prescription drug industry’s main lobbying arm, warned recently that proposals like those of Clinton and Sanders to cap skyrocketing drug costs “would restrict patients’ access to medicines, result in fewer new treatments for patients, cost countless jobs across the country and end our nation’s standing as the world leader in biomedical innovation.”