"Poizner's done; it's time to stick a fork in him...."

Thus sayeth Tony Quinn, a longtime California political commentator and observer of the Sacramento scene. You can read Quinn's piece in a blog post on Fox & Hounds titled "Poizner's Suicidal Mission":
http://foxandhoundsdaily.com/blog/tony- ... al-mission

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com

Workers' comp stakeholders may wish to take a close look at DWC rules which have now been posted for public comment.

Physicians will want to look at the new Lewin Group study on how physicians are paid in workers' comp, "Adapting the RBVRS Methodology to the California Workers' Compensation Physician Fee Schedule":
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/RBRVSLewinRep ... rt2010.pdf

The proposed rules adopt the RBVRS methodology to compensate doctors.
This is part of the DWC 12 point plan to control medical costs.

Also posted on the DWC website are proposed treating physician forms.

Public comment is invited til April 5. You can find the regs here:
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dwc/dwc_newslines ... 14-10.html

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com

Now it's official.

The Governor's furloughs of SCIF personnel has been declared illegal. The California Court of Appeal has upheld a Superior Court order finding those illegal.

Here's a pdf of the decision by a 3-0 vote of the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division Three:
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/do ... 125292.PDF

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com

Controversy has been brewing at DOSH, the California Department of Industrial Relations, Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

In apparent reaction to a former employee's unauthorized compensation for trainings in occupational safety and health while employed at DOSH,
DOSH recently launched an inquiry into activities of DOSH employees.
The inquiry required employees to fill out a questionaire on their speech activities.

This caused a widespread negative reaction among DOSH employees, who saw the inquiry as overbroad and intrusive. I've been told that some DOSH employees likened the inquiry to the Stasi, the East German Communist intelligence service that went wild investigating everyone and everything.

ACLU lawyers are now involved. The ACLU notes that the mandatory survey of speech activities "as written requires disclosure of presentations or trainings that have nothing to do with the work of DOSH and could include a range of private and/or political speech that public employees have a right to engage in without scrutiny by their employer or the government".

In a March 11, 2011 letter to John Duncan, Director of the Department of Industrial Relations, San Francisco-based ACLU staff attorney Julia Harumi Mass urges that the DIR notify DOSH employees they need not comply with the questionaire.

The letter from the ACLU is here.

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com

A new UCLA study finds that 1 in 4 Californians under age 65 lacked health insurance in 2009.

That's 8.2 million people in California alone.

Among people aged 18 to 65, 1 in every 3 Californians was uninsured.

That's a stunning statistic which undermines any of the glib TV talking heads who claim that our healthcare system is not broken and is the best in the world. A system that leaves 1 in 3 working adults to scrounge for healthcare at taxpayer funded hospital emergency rooms is not a viable system.

Those stats were generated before the recent large premium increases by Anthem Blue Cross. It's likely that with the skyrocketing premiums the figures will be much worse soon.

Disabled workers usually lose their health insurance and have no funds to buy COBRA coverage, so they usually find themselves uninsured.

The UCLA policy brief, by Shana Alex Lavarreda, E. Richard Brown, Livier Cabezas, and Dylan Roby, can be read in its entirety here:
http://www.healthpolicy.ucla.edu/pubs/P ... ?pubID=401

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com