COVID-Related Comp Legislation Struggles To Gain Traction

This year’s dearth of enacted COVID-19 legislation that would affect workers compensation is an indication that lawmakers have lost their appetite for measures to address the pandemic’s effect on worker infections, insurance experts say.

Last year, states passed 13 bills related to workers compensation, workplace safety and COVID-19, piggybacking on a wave of legislation approved in 2020 in the early stages of the pandemic, according to legislative analyses by the National Council on Compensation Insurance.

While 2022 saw a similar push, with more than a dozen bills introduced nationwide, only four have passed; most extend previous laws and one deals with comp rates, according to a mid-year NCCI report.

Laura L. Kersey, executive director of regulatory & legislative analysis for Boca Raton, Florida-based NCCI, said most of the bills introduced this year have dealt with presumptions that a disease was caught at work, not just for COVID-19 but for ‘infectious diseases.’