Senate Labor and Industrial Relations Chair Alan Seabaugh said he was happy to address the decades-old impasse over workers’ compensation during last year’s regular session, but he didn’t want to try to mediate a fight between insurers and health care providers.
So when the governor’s office asked him to carry a workers’ comp bill in 2025, he said he would, as long as all the main stakeholders were on board.
“I said ‘y’all work it out and bring me a bill that everybody has agreed to,’” Sebaugh says. “And they said they did, but they were mistaken.”
Seabaugh’s bill that would have, among other things, adjusted the reimbursement schedule for the first time in more than 30 years, did not advance out of committee.
“Some of the medical community were willing to work and others were not, and the ones that weren’t were kind of loud,” Seabaugh says. “And a lot of legislators just kind of said, ‘please don’t make me vote on this because I don’t know if these are in my district or not.’”
However, Senate Health and Welfare Chair Patrick McMath authored a resolution creating a task force in hopes of coming up with legislation that could survive the process during this year’s regular session. That legislation, if it comes to fruition, is likely to be the most hotly debated bill for the labor committees in both chambers.
“Many attempts to change the schedule by legislation over the years have failed due to distrust in the data, the process and politics,” Louisiana Works Secretary Susie Schowen said by email.
Louisiana’s Office of Workers’ Compensation Administration, at Schowen’s direction, does have the authority under specific guidelines to adjust the fee schedule based on the average “of the usual and customary charges” for treatments, drugs or supplies. But again, not everyone trusts that data, and many procedures aren’t even on the schedule because they are too new.
Sen. Brach Myers, who serves on Seabaugh’s labor committee, is expected to carry a workers’ comp bill. While Myers could not be reached for comment in time for this story, Schowen expects his bill will include a workers’ comp medical claims database based on information received from all the payors in Louisiana.
Schowen says it will also call for electronic approval to treat, electronic payment of medical claims and electronic storage or housing of medical records. Once all of this is in place, she says, injured workers’ medical providers should receive faster approval to treat and get paid faster.
Hopefully, this also means injured workers would be able to return to work faster. The bill would not affect benefits for workers, who would still be able to choose their doctor, she adds.
“We are well past due to address a very outdated medical fee schedule in Louisiana,” Insurance Commissioner Tim Temple says.
While the frequency of accidents has gone down, the severity of those accidents has gone up. The average duration of an injured worker out on workers’ comp benefits in Louisiana is well above the national average, he says, adding that he doubts Louisiana workers take longer to heal.
“So the next question is, who benefits from an injured worker being out?” Temple says. “You gotta find out what the answer is, and then you decide how to address that.”
Despite positive safety metrics, workers’ comp premiums in Louisiana consistently rank among the most expensive in the country, says Patrick Robinson, vice president of government relations for the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry and who directs LABI’s issues councils for employee relations and health care policy.
Louisiana workers out on workers’ comp stay out for 30-plus weeks on average, compared to less than half that average in some other neighboring states, Robinson says. The current system encourages litigation, which may help to explain that longer timeline, he says.
The static fee schedule means providers are free to overcharge for treatments that were developed too recently to be on the list. But it also means doctors that participate in the system also are underpaid for common procedures that cost a lot more than they used to.
Employers are looking for reimbursement levels that are fair to providers and predictable to payers, Robinson says. It also should be easier to update the fee schedule, so the parties don’t have to keep going back to the Legislature, he adds.
So what are the chances that something actually gets done this year? Robinson, who directed the workers’ compensation office under Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration, sounds hopeful, but not overwhelmingly so.
“I remain an optimistic pessimist on this, just because I’ve been engaged in this system for so many years,” he says.
