Injured on the job? Kansas has lowest lifetime workers’ comp limit, but that may change

In 2017 Jennifer Young, then a radiology technician, was brutally attacked by a patient. She suffered back and brain injuries so severe that she will never work again.

Although still in her 30s, Kansas workers’ compensation law blocked the Wichita mother from receiving any more than $155,000 in benefits for the rest of her life.

Young has been trying to change that limit for years. Now, lawmakers are working to fast track a compromise bill crafted by attorneys for labor and business groups to modernize the state’s workers’ compensation law. The overhaul could hold significant consequences for the thousands of Kansas workers injured on the job every year.

While Young says the adjustments aren’t perfect she said they would have made dramatic changes to her life if they had been in place before she was injured.

“Just the effect that it’s had on me personally and the effect it’s had on my family as a whole has just been the worst thing anyone can imagine,” Young said. “Every time you walk into work every morning you can be injured on your job.”

For years Kansas has had one of the worst workers’ compensation laws in the nation.

The law, which was last updated in 2011, blocks injured workers from taking in more than $155,000 in workers’ compensation benefits in their life, regardless of the severity of an injury and their ability to return to work.

Currently, 45 states have no cap on lifetime benefits for permanently disabled workers. Of the five states that have a cap, Kansas is the lowest.

Efforts to change workers’ compensation law, including expanding benefits for injured workers, have gone nowhere in the Kansas Legislature in recent years. Business groups often opposed the changes and lawmakers were hesitant to reopen the law because of the myriad of other issues that could also crop up.

“We have avoided opening the workers’ compensation statutes because you can lose control of a bill like this real quick and do a lot of damage to one side or the other,” Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Stillwell Republican, said.

But business and labor groups, including the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO of Kansas, began negotiating last year. They crafted a compromise bill that supporters say removes administrative hurdles to addressing workers’ compensation claims while increasing the benefits available to workers.

“When you’re the last in the country on the benefits you provide for workers that does not speak well,” Sen. Renee Erickson, a Wichita Republican, said. “The other concern is just being able to come to a price point that everyone agreed on. For that to happen, like I say, is a great day.”

The bill passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee last week. The policy holds bipartisan support and Erickson and Tarwater each said they hoped to move it through the House and Senate quickly without amendments.

Tony Andersen, an attorney who represented business groups during negotiations on the bill, said the process began at the beginning of 2023 and was primarily driven by a desire to raise Kansas’ benefit caps. Additionally, Andersen said, business groups wanted some predictability in the system, including limits on how long medical benefits could be kept open for minor injuries and steps to expedite court processes.

Both sides have said they didn’t get everything they wanted.

“The claimants’ bar would have liked higher caps, the employer community would have liked lower caps,” Andersen said. “This was a compromise as to where we felt that both sides could agree and it was not going to be a shock to the system.”

Jan Fisher, who represented labor groups, said a key element of the compromise was tying the new $400,000 cap to inflation so that it may not need adjustments in the future.

“The last major reform was 2011 that shows how long it takes to get through,” Fisher said. “The caps may have been adequate in 2011 but they sure weren’t adequate in 2023.”

Of the five states that cap lifetime benefits, the proposed $400,000 limit would be among the highest.

“This does raise us up from the very bottom so it’s definitely a step in the right direction and is in the best interest of the workers,” workers’ compensation attorney Jeff Cooper told lawmakers earlier this month.

In addition to raising the amount that workers can earn in compensation for their injuries, the law also streamlines the system so workers can progress through the system quicker and changes the way the law interacts with Social Security so injured workers don’t see their benefits drop as significantly if they earn a Social Security check.

Young said the bill doesn’t resolve all her concerns — she’d still like to see something that makes the process of getting medical needs covered less painful — but she viewed it as a major step in the right direction.

She said she was grateful for the hard work of the attorneys on the bill, as well as lawmakers like Erickson who met with her to hear her story, but that she had no plans to stop fighting for more changes to the system.

“I’m not going to let anyone else be failed by this system,” she said.