Today, hundreds of injured workers, their families, concerned voters, union members and advocates for workers' rights converged on the N.C. General Assembly for a rally against workers' compensation reform. These concerned citizens also had the opportunity to share their stories with their elected officials and to educate them about the impact the proposed changes to North Carolina's workers' comp system would have on hard-working people.

Several of our injured clients had the chance to meet with their legislators,. And for the most part, the lawmakers listened and seemed genuinely concerned about the changes the insurance lobby and others are trying to push through. I'm not bold enough to say that we have the votes yet to defeat this legislation. But we made some important connections today, and we helped shed some light on this issue.

It's time now to build on that momentum.

Once the workers' comp reform bill is introduced -- and that truly should happen any day now -- I would urge you to call and write to your elected officials in Raleigh to remind them what's at stake and ask them to vote no on workers' comp reform. If you attended the rally in Raleigh today, it's especially important that you follow up with the legislators that you met in person. Remind them of your conversation and remind them that you expect them to vote against this bad bill.

Today's rally at the General Assembly coincided with the meeting of the N.C. House Committee on Insurance. The committee heard from Dr. Richard Victor, the executive director of the Workers Compensation Research Institute. It's clear that Dr. Victor's testimony was intended to prime the pump for the introduction of this bad reform bill. The WCRI claims to be independent and unbiased, but the sole purpose of Victor's testimony seemed to be to establish that workers' comp costs are out of control in North Carolina and that something must be done to rein in those costs.

Was it any surprise that Rep. Dale Folwell of Forsyth County, who is the rumored sponsor of the workers' comp reform bill, introduced Victor during the commitee meeting? (And likely orchestrated his appearance, too.)

A little background on the WCRI. While the group claims to be unbiased, its membership is comprised primarily of insurance companies and employers. These very same stakeholders also provide the "data" that the WCRI uses in its research.

As has been reported before, the WCRI says that North Carolina has the highest workers' comp costs of any state studied -- some 19 percent to 45 percent higher. The problem with those percentages is that they're statistically invalid because they're based on a non-random sampling of just 16 states handpicked by the WCRI. We consulted with Dr. Sat Gupta, a professor of mathematics and statistics at UNCG, and asked him to review the WCRI's research methods. His conclusion, in short, was that WCRI's findings are statistically invalid because the source data used did not reflect a random sampling of states.

Of course, there's a whole lot more wrong with WCRI's so-called research. And we hope that legislators will be able to see thorugh the smokescreen.