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Washington: Health Care Benefits May Be Used to Compute Claimant’s Wage Basis Only When Employer Has Made Actual Contribution to Plan

April 06, 2017 (1 min read)

Under Wash. Rev. Code § § 51.08.178(1), an employee is entitled to have the value of health care benefits included in his or her wage computation if, at the time of the injury, the employer had made payments or contributions toward such benefits on the employee’s behalf. Accordingly, where an employee was to qualify for health care benefits only after he completed a 90-day orientation period, and he sustained a work-related injury prior to the expiration of that term, his wage basis must be computed without adding the value of the yet-to-be-earned benefit.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Miller v. Shope Concrete Prods. Co., 2017 Wash. App. LEXIS 672 (Mar. 20, 2017)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 93.01.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law


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