Illinois Workers' Compensation News: On April 14, 2011 Illinois Senate Bill 1349, a proposed amendment to the Illinois Workers' Compensation Act, was defeated. The proposed amendment would have drastically altered or eliminated many of the rights and benefits that workers' compensation attorneys in Chicago and across Illinois have been fighting for on behalf of injured workers for years. Among some of the proposed changes were:
Providing explicit definitions for the terms "accident" and "injury";
Stricter guidelines for establishing causal connections between the workers' injury and the work accident or circumstances of employment;
Eliminating the injured worker's right to choose their own physician for the first 60 days following notice of the accident, and replacing it with the employer's right to choose which physician may initially diagnose and treat an injury;
Eliminating Temporary Total Disability (TTD) benefits for injured workers if they are fired for cause, regardless of whether they have finished treating or are able to work;
Eliminating an employer's liability to provide medical care or benefits beyond an initial emergency inpatient or outpatient visit if the employee was intoxicated by alcohol, marijuana, or any controlled substance when he or she was injured;
Terminating wage differential awards at the time when either the employee reaches the age of 67, or when the award has been paid for 5 years, whichever occurs at a later date;
Stricter guidelines for establishing the extent of an injured workers' Permanent Partial Disability (PPD) after treatment has concluded;
Clearly, this proposed amendment would have had a devastating effect on the rights that injured workers have relied on in order to receive the benefits they deserve. However, Senate Bill 1349 only received 25 of the 30 votes required in order for the bill to pass, and the Illinois Workers' Compensation Act survives in its current form to provide for the injured worker.
