What big companies pay workers when they lose body parts on the job

WASHINGTON - Workers' compensation laws are changing in some states, and these alterations are having a big effect on working people.

A new investigation by ProPublica and NPR finds plenty of evidence of people who would have been covered under the old laws but are left behind by the new system.

One woman who injured her back while trying to help a patient into a wheelchair now lives off of her son's Social Security payments. Another man, a disabled truck driver who struggles to afford his pain medication, reveals that he has lived off of just half a can of SpaghettiOs a day.

Texas has long allowed companies to opt out of the state's workers' compensation plan and offer their own benefit plans instead. Now, with the backing of big companies including Wal-Mart, Nordstrom, Lowe's and Whole Foods, that policy is spreading to other states.

Oklahoma recently adopted a similar law allowing its companies to create their own workers' comp plans, and Tennessee and South Carolina are considering similar measures. Plans such as these now cover nearly 1.5 million workers in Texas and Oklahoma.

Those in favor of allowing companies to adopt their own plans say the practice will lower costs, get employees back to work faster and improve workplace safety. They say that workers' compensation has created a huge and costly bureaucracy and fostered an adversarial relationship between injured workers and their employers.

Their opponents, however, say that the changes will prevent injured workers from getting help, and shift the cost of care to federal programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

To analyze what kind of effect these rule changes are having, ProPublica and NPR took a detailed look into the kinds of injury benefit plans that have replaced traditional workers' comp for nearly 120 companies that opted out of the state plans in Texas and Oklahoma - the first independent analysis of what impact these new plans might be having on workers.

The new plans 'almost universally have lower benefits, more restrictions and virtually no independent oversight,” write Michael Grabell of ProPublica and Howard Berkes of NPR.

The investigation also reveals how many loopholes and oversights the Texas corporate plans contain. Whether intentionally or not, the plans are written to exclude a lot of injured workers who would have been compensated under the state plan.

For example, they found:

l McDonald's doesn't cover carpal tunnel syndrome.

l Brookdale Senior Living, which runs a chain of assisted living facilities, doesn't cover bacterial infections among its employees.

l Costco doesn't cover exposure to asbestos or mold. Costco also won't cover external hearing aids costing more than $600 - even though the cheapest external hearing aid Costco sells is $900, Grabell and Berkes say.

One of the most substantial changes is that almost all of these plans require employees to report an injury within a brief time window - usually, before the end of their shift, or within 24 hours - or forego any compensation for that injury altogether.

Under the old workers' compensation rules, an employee would have 30 days to report an injury. In addition, Texas plans cut off medical treatment after about two years, compared with lifetime medical care under traditional workers' compensation.

The plans place strict limitations on payouts for deaths and catastrophic injuries, and don't pay compensation for many permanent disabilities, Grabell and Berkes found.

In Texas at least, the new rules allow workers to sue their employers for negligence, a potentially huge payout that proponents of the changes say will help create better working environments.

But Grabell and Berkes also find that companies are finding ways to avoid these lawsuits, including having employees sign waivers and using more arbitration agreements.