I hate being wrong, even though I have had ample experience in that arena. It’s just that, while I am not always right, I am generally never in doubt, and it turns out that is a bad combination when your self-confidence betrays your actual accuracy and ability.
I just hate it when that happens.
Yesterday I posted an article about New York’s broad and unilateral expansion of PTSD benefits. The legislation, passed late last year and effective January 1, 2025, took a statute designed to provide presumptions for any first responder filing a claim “premised upon extraordinary work-related stress” incurred “in a work-related emergency,” and expanded it.
The new version provided stress-related presumptions to essentially anybody with a job and a hangnail. In the article yesterday I noted this was the realization of a prediction I had made years ago. I have maintained the “two-tier benefit” structure providing special presumptive benefits to a privileged class would eventually have to give way to an expansion of those benefits. Readers of that article will also have likely noted a bit of sarcastic snarky-ness over the matter, as my stalwart facade of objectivity was betrayed by my belief that this was an incredibly stupid move by the legislature.
As it turns out, someone in New York had the same idea, as this past January, just a few weeks after the original legislative action, the legislature passed, and the governor signed, bill S00755, which completely reversed the previous bill and restored the original language of the statute. They also added a paragraph of language clarifying standards for first responder claims. That addition appears to tie benefit determinations to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
The reversal of the benefit expansion was effective immediately upon signing, February 14, 2025. The additional paragraph language related to DSM application became effective June 14, 2025.
So, in reality I was actually right, if only for a few days and 8 months after the fact.
My article yesterday had only been online for a few minutes when I heard from Adam Fowler, Director of Regulatory Affairs at MyMatrixx, and clearly a dude on top of his job. He provided me the information regarding the reversal and revision of this law.
I appreciate his help, as it allows me to continue with my unwavering and likely undeserved feeling of confidence on my opinions.
I still maintain that the existence of benefits available to a special class of people, where the determination of compensability relies mainly on a job title, is fundamentally flawed and unfair to others in the private sector. I also believe that this brief dalliance with expansion shows that the appetite to remedy that defect exists within state legislatures. I believe expansion to the private sector is an eventual inevitability, since for the political class reversing benefits for first responders is likely even more untenable than the benefit gap that exists today.
And we take no solace in the fact that much of the underlying basis of these laws only rests on political science and no other category. But that is the challenge for a system ultimately at the mercy of politics and politicians.
So when it happens again, I’ll be back with another confident victory lap. But I’ll probably check with Adam first, just to be safe.