Boys and girls, this story is brought to you by the letter "C" which stands for Cymbalta..
This morning I took a trip to the Bay Area to put flowers on my father’s grave. He passed away in 2003 at the age of 89 when he wanted dialysis no more, after his kidneys gave out. He made his choice when his quality of life degraded to a point where life wasn’t worth living anymore. While I was in the neighborhood, I went across El Camino Real and found myself at Cypress Lawn Cemetery and standing in front of the final resting place of former Governor of California and United States Senator Hiram Johnson.
Next thing I knew, the ground shook. I didn’t know if there was shifting on the San Andreas fault or it was just Governor Johnson turning in his grave to show his displeasure at how an industry that is totally out of control had bastardized and convoluted his Workers Compensation system into something that doesn’t even resemble a benefits delivery system anymore.
For those of you young folks who don’t recognize the name, Hiram Johnson is responsible for 3 things that we see in use every day in California; the granddaddy to our Workers Compensation system, the ballot initiative and the referendum. Although Hiram was a Republican, in those days progressive Republicans were like the Democrats of today.
So many of our politicians lose track of the fact that Workers Compensation is supposed to benefit workers who are injured at work, not to pump up insurance industry profits. Who do you think is the primary stakeholder in this equation, the injured worker? Not according to the insurance industry. Look at all these fraud committees and steering committees, not one representative of the injured worker community. I wonder why?
There are so many folks in so many businesses that feed off of the teats of this mama pig that one loses sight of what it’s all about. Instead of simply taking care of the injuries of the occupationally injured, our legislators seem to spend all of their time figuring out how to take benefits away from the folks who built this state off of the sweat of their brows and the pain in their backs.
Injured workers are like staplers. When you break one you have 2 choices, fix them or throw them in the trash and get new ones! What do you think is happening to our highly trained work force when they get injured. “Hey throw them on the trash heap and get another. Welfare, MediCare and MediCal will take care of them. Why should we.” They say. That’s the attitude of the insurance industry as they whittle away the benefits for injured workers that were agreed to way back almost 100 years ago. Have you seen the insurance companies lose one thing that they were awarded in this historic compromise? Didn’t think so.
Any attempts to right the wrongs of this so-called reform of 2004 are referred to by the Chamber of Commerce and the insurance industry spin doctors as "Job Killers!" I think what they really mean are "Profit Killers." You wouldn’t have the eight hour day and employer provided medical care if they weren’t fought for by the blood and sweat of America’s workers. What is the quality of life like for California’s injured workers when they can’t get simple medical care for their injuries, many of which were caused by employer negligence in this age of nonexistent workplace safety.
Working Californians have had it up to here. They are ready to fight back and take this situation into their own hands in the form of a ballot initiative to let the will of working Californians be known. I am fairly confident that grass-roots organized labor will get behind this initiative and support it every way they can since it’s fairly obvious that our state politicians and our Governor who speaks with a forked tongue, who rely on campaign money from big businesses and the insurance industry simply cannot be relied upon to do the right thing for their constituents.
It doesn’t take a ton of money to achieve this goal, just a lot of determined workers and voters who aren’t afraid of the "Terminator!" Want more information?
