Reading Room

 The battlefield for the assault on state workers’ compensation programs has shifted from the state capitals to the halls of Congress. Industry and their insurers are now shifting gears from an attempt at tinkering with individual systems to a more generalized approach, where assets and energies can be concentrated uniformly through Federal modification of globalized issues that will place into jeopardy the rights of workers and significantly hamper the efforts of their attorneys in seeking recovery under state workers’ compensation systems. 

The ever-increasing desire of industry to contain costs in the medical management arena, as well as to gather information about current employees and new hires, and the technological realities of the millennium are now creating new battle lines for workers over the privacy of their medical, genetic, and other personal records.

The ever increasing desire of industry to contain costs in the medical management arena, as well as to gather information about current employees and new hires, and the technological realities of the millenium are now creating new battle lines for workers over the privacy of their medical, genetic, and other personal records. Computers make it easier to store, collect, share and analyze all kinds of data. The attempt to formulate intervention in this arena has placed both federal and state governments as contenders in the management of the confrontation, which may ultimately affect the employment status of every worker in the nation.