In the toolkit of the modem welfare state, workers’ compensation is a form of social insurance that has been devised as a remedy to compensate for the ever-present risk of occupational injury and disease that looms over every working person. In the Philippines, Employees’ Compensation (“EC”), a product of the Labor Code, provides relief to more than forty million workers for work-related injuries and diseases. However, in the landmark case of Raro v. ECC, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to EC’s efficacy in achieving its policy goals and restricted its discretion in providing relief to claimants. In denying the eponymous Raro’s claim, the Court held that an occupational disease may only be compensable when the claimant can show “positive proof’ that the illness was caused by employment and the risk of contracting the disease is increased by the working conditions. This paper presents a critique of the Court’s holding and ratio in Raro, and offers an altemative framework for assessing EC claims with regard to occupational diseases, taking into account (1) the incentives faced by EC’s administrators; and (2) the nature of medical science in relation to occupational diseases and cancers in particular.