Las Vegas – A scantily clad acrobat dangles from the ceiling, performing flips and splits as machines puff smoke and neon lights bathe the dance floor in turquoise and magenta. Dancers in lingerie gyrate on poles to the booming techno. Actors dressed as aliens pose for selfies with partygoers. There’s an open bar and waiters weave through the crowd passing out chocolate truffles.
It’s the closing night of the National Workers’ Compensation and Disability Conference & Expo.
The party at Light, a Cirque du Soleil-themed club at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, capped off the workers’ comp industry’s biggest annual networking event. For three days in November, hundreds of vendors wooed insurers and employers with lavish after-hours parties, giveaways of designer handbags, photos with Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug, and free rides in orange Hummer limousines.
A top manager for a major insurance company recalled standing amid the hoopla a few years back when a company CEO turned to her and marveled: “All of this because somebody got hurt at work.”
Workers’ comp is supposed to be simple. If you’re injured on the job, your employer pays your medical bills and part of your wages while you recover.
But over the past two decades, a cottage industry of middlemen has emerged, which some have dubbed the “workers’ comp industrial complex.” Even private equity firms have bought in, seeing profit opportunities in employers’ and insurers’ quest to contain spending.