Medical Marijuana Challenges Workers Comp Payers

Workers compensation payers should face up to the inevitability that they will have to pay for medical marijuana pain treatments for injured workers despite any concerns they have, experts say. Chief among those apprehensions is pot’s effects on the injured workers themselves, who may become “guinea pigs” in an arena that has little historic data for medical use, as well as how to price the drug, they add. “My concerns with medical marijuana are the unregulation of it and the fact that the content isn’t necessarily consistent,” Niki Ingram, Philadelphia-based director of the workers compensation department of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin P.C., said at the Philly I-Day conference in Philadelphia on Tuesday. “There are studies that show that THC can create psychosis in individuals who are prone to anxiety. I wonder if we’re changing one set of problems for another. My other concern is how do you judge impairment.”