Short answer. It is meant to give employees and their dependents prompt income and medical-related benefits when a disability or death is work-connected. Article 166 states this as the State's policy: a tax-exempt program built specifically around injuries and deaths that arise from, or in connection with, employment.
What the law says
The State shall promote and develop a tax-exempt employees’ compensation program whereby employees and their dependents, in the event of work-connected disability or death, may promptly secure adequate income benefit and medical related benefits.
Labor Code, Article 166 — State Policy On Employees’ Compensation. Read the full provision →
The trigger is a work connection
Article 166 states the policy behind the whole program in one sentence: the State is to promote a program covering employees and their dependents in the event of work-connected disability or death. The operative phrase is work-connected. The program is not meant as a general safety net for any disability or death an employee happens to suffer — it is oriented specifically around the ones connected to the person's employment. That framing sets the scope for everything the program is built to provide.
Two kinds of benefit, named directly
The policy identifies what the program is meant to deliver: adequate income benefit and medical related benefits. Income benefit addresses the earnings an employee or their dependents lose when a work-connected disability or death occurs. Medical related benefits address the costs tied to treating the condition itself. Both are described as things the covered person should be able to promptly secure — the statute frames speed of access, not just eventual entitlement, as part of the program's purpose.
Who the program is meant to reach
Article 166 names both employees and their dependents as the people the program is for. That matters most in the case of a work-connected death, where the employee is no longer the one who can claim anything — it is the dependents left behind who stand to secure the benefit. The policy treats the employee and the people who depend on them as a single group the program exists to protect, not the employee alone.
A tax-exempt program, by design
The article also specifies that the program is meant to be tax-exempt. That detail is part of the policy itself: benefits paid out under this program are not meant to be diminished by taxation before they reach the employee or the dependents who need them. Read together, Article 166 sets out a program aimed narrowly and deliberately at work-connected disability and death, promising prompt, untaxed income and medical support to the people genuinely affected by it.