Florida bill proposes employer-run comp alternative

A Florida lawmaker on Tuesday introduced legislation that would allow businesses to create their own programs to compensate workers for occupational injuries as an alternative to participating in the state’s workers compensation system.

H.B. 1069 would allow employers to continue providing benefits for occupational injuries under work comp or elect to become “a qualified compensation alternative employer,” and would have to create a written plan, demonstrate financial ability to pay benefits, which include medical coverage, indemnity and death benefits.

The bill would require the alternative plans to declare that work performed in the course and scope of employment must be a major contributing cause of an injury or death for a claim to be covered. The bill would also declare that employers “must provide benefits to an employee otherwise eligible for occupational injury benefits if the employee reports an accident or a known exposure to an occupational disease within three days.”

Alternative plans would be required to define an occupational disease as something characteristic of a particular trade, occupation, process or type of work. Under the bill, alternative benefit programs would have to define occupational diseases in a way that “does not include ordinary diseases of life to which the general public is exposed.”

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