California's Secretary of State has approved for signature gathering a workers' comp initiative. If passed, a free-for-all will ensue for applicant attorneys and doctors, and it could be the end of the workers' comp business in California as we know it. Of course, before it gets on the ballot, someone—nearly 450,000 someones—needs to sign the petition to get it there. Find out who Wild Bill is, why the CAAA doesn't support this thing, and whether it has a chance. Read all about it in the current print edition of Workers' Comp Executive, or if you're a premium subscriber, just click here.
An applicant attorney out of Turlock has jumped the first hurdle in his quest to roll back workers' comp reforms – back to the Stone Age, by industry and employer accounts. But without the cash necessary to launch a signature campaign and without backing from even the California Applicants' Attorneys Association, his effort is likely to go nowhere and suffer the same fate as three workers' comp initiative drives in 2006, which failed to garner enough signatures to qualify for last November's ballot. But the initiative has created angst and action among its opponents.
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