As this country (and Western European countries) industrialized the occurrence of serious on the job injury skyrocketed ~ the only relief was to sue, and in the meantime you'd still be injured with nothing being done unless you were otherwise wealthy.
Workman's comp opened the courts back up ~ probably not a good outcome if you think about it ~ but the legal standard became one where the employer paid first. I'd imagine the death rates declined.
ObamaKKKare has no clear cut interest in any particular public problem ~ and eventually it will fail, as did the idea that you could take care of industrial accidents with lawsuits. Just imagine what happens when 320 million people start flooding the federal district courts with legal disputes involving ObamaKKKare ~ I certainly can't ~ there aren't enough courthouses nor federal judges, but this process certain removes billing disputes from your state and local courts to the federal docket. Congress can simply refuse to fund more courts and that'll be the end of ObamaKKKare.
In the meantime I"m making sure I get the best care possible by taking all my problems and questions to my representatives in Congress FIRST!!! They can help me eh! Just keep those cards and letters coming folks.
If the only means of recompense for an employee who is injured on the job is to sue his employer, this puts an injured employee in the awkward position of having to sue his employer; if the employee is subsequently dismissed for whatever reason, it may put the employer in the awkward position of having to show that the dismissal was not a form of retaliation for the lawsuit.
In theory, workman's compensation avoids the conflict by creating a system where employees have no disincentive to seeking to have their injury-related costs paid, and employers are not seen as having any basis for retaliation. Such a system is not without advantages. The problem is one common to many types of insurance--its existence can alter people's behavior, and can very easily create feedback loops which can cause costs to spiral out of control especially if an insured party can profitably engage in behavior which substantially increases the likelihood of a claim, but the costs to the insurer will be sufficiently diluted among other insured parties that the profit from the behavior exceeds the portion of the costs paid by the person engaging in it.