Montana has long had a workers’ comp problem. Its labor force is injured far more frequently and at greater expense to employers than is typical around the country. Part of that stems from the jobs people do in Montana — drilling for oil and working in mines. But part of it has been the system itself. A prominent national study, released last fall, singled out Montana’s as the most expensive workers’ compensation system in the United States — with premiums 163 percent higher than the national median.
“We had businesses just up and walking across the border to Idaho and North Dakota,” says state Representative Scott Reichner, the sponsor of an overhaul package that was signed into law in April. “It was killing us. Lawyers push the envelope and make the system looser and looser and next thing you know we’re covering everybody for everything."
In March, the Montana Supreme Court upheld a Workers’ Compensation Court award involving a man who smoked marijuana on the job at a tourist attraction before feeding — and subsequently being mauled by — a grizzly bear. The state is footing approximately $35,000 in medical bills because, in the words of the court, bears are “equal opportunity maulers,” even though the decision to smoke pot around them was “ill-advised to say the least and mind-bogglingly stupid to say the most.”
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