What's a leg worth? $15,000? $20,000?

Is the loss of an arm worth more to a welder or to a parts delivery person?

If a workplace accident results in a serious back injury, should compensation cover the degenerative effects throughout the body as a person ages?

Under Wyoming's workers' compensation program, it's the job of a claims analyst to apply a fixed standard when determining fair compensation for a workplace injury. Yet the results may differ greatly due to the complex nature and consequence of individual circumstances.

"They gave me $7,000 for breaking my back," said Mike VanPatten of Evanston, who was injured in a drilling rig accident.

Advocates of workers' compensation say many aspects of the program need fixing, but they are focusing mostly on improving benefits for workers with long-term or lifelong injuries.

Kim Floyd, the Wyoming State AFL-CIO's executive director, said "permanent total" and "permanent partial" disability should be revised to reflect injured workers' actual work life expectancy.

Currently, state law follows the American Medical Association's definition of "permanent total disability," which requires an injured worker to be in a "state approaching death." That dangles compensation just out of reach for many injured workers.

Steve Emery, an attorney with the Casper firm Williams, Porter, Day and Neville, said long-term injuries pose a significant liability for workers' compensation.

"Wyoming's Workers' Compensation Act is pretty liberal with statutes of limitations," Emery said. "A guy who gets injured, he can potentially receive lifetime benefits for that injury, as he should."

When an injured worker is determined to have recovered as best as medically expected, he goes to a doctor for an evaluation, and the division applies a disability rating based on standards set by the American Medical Association.

The result often is a monetary settlement, ending the workers' compensation case.

Such offers are often contested by injured workers, who say a one-time payment of $5,000 to $50,000 is a pittance compared with the lost ability to return to the jobs they had before the accidents.

"We've had discussion about the division forcing inappropriate settlements," said Gary Child, outgoing director of the Wyoming Workers' Safety and Compensation Division. "We don't force any settlements. Analysts may discuss potential settlement options, but as far as trying to twist anybody's arm, that just doesn't happen."

Advocates of workers' comp reform also want Wyoming lawmakers to restore coverage of on-the-job mental stress or trauma, which was restricted in 1994 to say that a compensable mental injury must be the direct result of a physical on-the-job injury.

It's a particular concern for firefighters, police officers and other emergency responders.

In 2005, firefighter Abe Wheeler responded to a call in which two of his fellow firefighters and friends were killed.

In addition to his physical injuries, Wheeler suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Wheeler and his attorney, Mike Newman. But the workers' compensation program quickly stopped paying for his counseling and medication.

"The division had a clear choice of whether to treat Wheeler, and they chose not to. Not because it was the right thing to do, but just because they could," Newman said.

The Legislature's Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee will lead an interim study of workers' comp this year, and some lawmakers already have indicated interest in raising the death benefit. Even the Wyoming Mining Association, which hasn't backed comprehensive reform of the program, agrees the death benefit is too low.

If a Wyoming worker is killed on the job today, the most his spouse might receive is $204,948.80, plus $10,000 for burial costs.

"It shouldn't be cheaper to kill a worker than to have a safe work environment," said Dan Neal, executive director of the Equality State Policy Center, a watchdog group pushing for reform.

"There's been a lot of discussion about the adequacy of benefits for the injured worker," Child said. "As I advised the Labor Committee, we're more than amenable to review that. It's appropriate to review that structure. We want to be sure we are adequate with providing benefits."

Reporter Dustin Bleizeffer can be reached at (307) 577-6069 or dustin.bleizeffer@trib.com.

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Here's what Wyoming law says injured workers should receive from the workers' comp system:

Permanent total disability or death: Each dependent child of the worker gets $150 per month until the age of 18 or until death, whichever occurs first, or until the age of 21 if enrolled as full-time student.

Permanent partial impairment: An injured worker gets two-thirds of the statewide average monthly wage, based on the year immediately preceding the time of injury.*

Temporary total disability: An injured worker gets two-thirds of the worker's actual monthly earnings at the time of injury, but not to exceed the statewide average monthly wage during the prior year.

Temporary light duty: An injured worker gets a monthly rate of 80 percent "of the difference between the employee's light duty wage and the employee's actual monthly earnings at the time of injury," according to state law.

Permanent partial disability, permanent total disability, and death:

1. An employee whose actual monthly earnings are less than 73 percent of the statewide average gets 92 percent of the employee's actual monthly earnings.

2. If an employee's monthly earnings are at least 73 percent of the statewide average, but less than the statewide average, the employee gets two-thirds of the statewide monthly average.

3. An employee whose monthly earnings are equal to or greater than the statewide monthly average gets two-thirds of the employee's actually monthly earnings, but not more than the statewide monthly average.

4. In the case of a work-related death, if awards described in paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 are less than 80 percent of the statewide monthly average wage, the award is adjusted to an amount not less than 80 percent of the statewide average. Workers' compensation typically pays a total $10,000 for burial expenses for a worker killed on the job.

When a worker is killed on the job, the surviving spouse gets a monthly payment as provided under paragraphs 1, 2, 3 and 4, for a period of 54 months.

When a worker is killed, a surviving parent who received "substantially all of his financial support" from the worker at the time of the accident gets a one-time payment of $600, then $150 per month for 30 months or until the parent dies.

* For the first quarter of 2008, the statewide average monthly wage was $3,202.33. So a benefit calculated on two-thirds that amount is $2,134.99 per month, according to the Wyoming Workers' Safety and Compensation Division.

Source: Wyoming Workers' Compensation Act