05.16.2013
By Joan E. Collier
Insurance Information Institute President Bob Hartwig gave his trademark high energy presentation at today’s NCCI Annual Issues Symposium in Orlando. Some highlights from “Moving Beyond the Great Recession: Recovery, Uncertainty and Implications for Workers’ Compensation and P&C Insurance Markets”:
The good news:
2013 will build on 2012 as only the second year of solid grow since the great recession Growth is likely to exceed A.M. Best projection of +4.5 percent for 2013 Wage growth is positive and could modestly accelerate Workers’ compensation remains the fastest growing P&C line for the third straight year Industry capacity hit new records in 2013 Investment environment is much more favorable Workers’ compensation is the principal beneficiary of the improving job outlook Private employers added 6.74 million jobs since 2010 All of the jobs “lost” since President Obama took office in January 2009 have been recouped Payrolls are 12.2 percent above their 2009 trough and up 2.7 percent over the past year Oil and gas extraction employment is up 23.1 percent since January 2010 ...05.13.2013
By Joan E. Collier
Indiana’s new workers’ compensation legislation, signed into law by Gov. Mike Pence on May 11, makes a dent in the problem of physician-dispensed repackaged drug problem that plagues so many states.
In Indiana, HB 1320 mandates that repackaged drugs cannot be sold for a higher price than the average wholesale price established by the original manufacturer. The bill also places a cap on the price of implants at the actual cost plus 25 percent and puts in place a workers’ compensation hospital fee schedule at 200 percent of Medicare.
In contrast, Florida’s new bill (passed amid much debate and bickering) will allow physicians to charge 12.5 percent over the average wholesale price plus an $8 dispensing fee for offering their patients the “convenience” of dispensing prescribed drugs from their offices. Drugs sold by pharmacies would continue to be paid for at AWP plus a $4.18 dispensing fee.
Well hallelujah to the Hoosiers. Somebody finally got the repackaged drug thing right. Or, as Steve Schneider, Midwest region...
04.29.2013
By Joan E. Collier
I think most of us can agree that the repackaged drug bill that is slowly working its way through the Florida Legislature is pretty anemic. HB 605, which passed the House Health and Human Services Committee on Monday, April 29, is endorsed by business groups, the Florida Medical Association, pharmacy associations and drug repackaging companies—that about says it all, doesn’t it?
The bill will allow physicians to charge 12.5 percent over the average wholesale price plus an $8 dispensing fee for offering their patients the “convenience” of dispensing prescribed drugs from their offices. (Drugs sold by pharmacies would continue to be paid for at AWP plus a $4.18 dispensing fee.)
The 12.5 percent may sound high to people who have not been following the problem, but it reality it is a definite improvement over the current scenario, which allows doctors to charge whatever they wanted and whatever the market could bear.
This battle has been going on for years in Florida and other states, and is...
04.09.2013
By Joan E. Collier
Everyone says that a corporate safety culture has to come from the head office. But rarely do people talk about what happens if the company’s top officers are not leading the risk management charge. Even more rarely does anyone do anything about it.
Enter Chevron and its board of directors. Displeased with the company’s safety record in 2012—it had several accidents around the world last year—the board cut CEO John Watson’s annual bonus by 13 percent. He received $3.48 million, down from $4 million in 2011.
They also cut bonuses for four other executives. George Kirkland, executive vice president of upstream operations, saw his bonus drop 15 percent to $2.2 million. General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate received $948,900, a cut of 11 percent from $1.08 million in 2011. CFO Patricia Yarrington saw her bonus fall 6 percent, to $1.34 million. Receiving the biggest bonus chop was Michael Wirth, executive vice president of downstream and chemicals. He received $1.26 million for 2012, a drop of 16 percent from the previous year.
Now, before we...
04.03.2013
By Joan E. Collier
Regular visitors to our website will notice a big change to our Home Page. Instead of featuring one story at a time, we have incorporated a slideshow function that allows readers to quickly see our most current and most popular articles. This puts the latest industry news even more at your fingertips!
Another change is coming soon. We are in the final stages of developing a career center. This free resource will offer information on available workers’ compensation jobs and other insurance industry positions across the country. The new career center is part of our commitment to be a full resource for everyone in our industry.
And, as the 68th annual Workers’ Compensation Educational Conference gets ever closer—August 18 to 21 in Orlando—we continue to add information on speakers and presentations to our Conference pages. I encourage you to check back frequently to get the latest news on sessions that interest you. Remember, you can save money by registering early. The cost of registration is $250...
03.25.2013
By Joan E. Collier
Count one more group on the “get rid of pill mills” team. In a letter this month to the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), the National Association of Attorneys General both praised the agency for its actions on battling prescription drugs abuse and urged it to do more.
“We applaud the FDA for expeditiously proposing guidelines establishing clear standards for manufacturers who develop and market tamper-and abuse-resistant opioid products ... ,” the officials said. (Earlier this year, the FDA issued draft guidelines to manufacturers about developing drugs that are more difficult to to crush or dissolve, two steps often used by abusers.) The AGs noted, however, that the guidelines did not reference generic drugs, and so “non-medical users are shifting away from the new tamper-resistant formulations to non-tamper-resistant formulations of other opioids as well as to illegal drugs.” They urged the agency to fix the gap.
Addiction to these pills must be a horrendous existence. It is most certainly widespread. Prescription drug abuse is the fastest-growing...
03.11.2013
By Joan E. Collier
The news is out, and it’s big. Styx, the multi-platinum selling band, will rock the house at this year’s annual Workers’ Compensation Educational Conference.
Renegade! Lady! Come Sail Away! Babe! Everybody has their favorite Styx song. You’ll hear yours when Tommy, JY, Todd and the rest of the boys take the stage as our feature entertainment Monday, August 19. As always, each convention registrant gets one free show ticket!
If you’ve been with us before, you know our conference is the best and biggest in the business. If you are new this year, you are in for an experience you won’t forget. During the day, there are hundreds of sessions to choose from, presentations by nationally recognized speakers, CEUs, even a live surgery! And in the evening, lots of party invitations, from our Styx concert to corporate shindigs.
Our host hotel is once again the Marriott Orlando World Center and its 200-acres of luxury rooms, amenities, golf,...
03.06.2013
By Joan E. Collier
It is a safe bet that Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer is not celebrating global Telework Week March 4 through 8. However, more than 110,000 workers are taking part. Hosted by the public-private partnership Mobile Work Exchange, the five-day event was founded three years ago to improve awareness of the benefits of teleworking. Participants have pledged to work from home at least one day this week, and the organization has seen a 55 percent increase in participation since last year.
In a now infamous memo emailed to all Yahoo employees in February, workers were advised that, “To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.” Wonder if they have roll call like in grade school.
As someone who has “worked from home” for 20 years now, I think I have some experience on this issue. First of all, yes, you can do...
03.01.2013
By Joan E. Collier
When the Florida Legislature convenes on March 3, one of the bills it will consider during its 60-day session will be the “The Cathy Jordan Medical Cannibis Act.” It probably will not even make it out of committee. It should.
Cathy Jordan has ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and is confined to a wheelchair. For years, she has been using homegrown marijuana to help ease the disease's terrible symptoms. She and her Vietnam veteran husband were open about Cathy’s home remedy for pain and their advocacy to legalize medical marijuana. The two live in Parrish in Manatee County, for decades a rural community that saw rather massive home developments during the latest real estate boom.
In a bizarre set of circumstances this week, Manatee County sheriff’s deputies confiscated the few plants the Jordans had in their fenced-in backyard. No, it was not police run amuck. A housing inspector looking into the vacant house next door saw an extension cord running from the vacant...
02.18.2013
By Joan E. Collier
A temporary worker in Jacksonville, Fla. became that literally when he was killed his first day on the job. On August 16, 2012, Lawrence Daquan "Day" Davis, 21, reported for work at the Bacardi Bottling Corp. where he was, later that same day, crushed to death by a palletizer machine. Davis has been cleaning glass from under the hoist of a palletizing machine when another employee restarted the machine.
OSHA investigated the death. In its findings, released on February 8, the agency said that “Bacardi Bottling failed to train temporary employees on utilizing locks and tags to prevent the accidental start-up of machines and to ensure its own employees utilized procedures to lock or tag out machines.”
It cited Bacardi for nine serious violations, two willful citations, and one other-than-serious violation; proposed fines total $192,000. I won’t discuss the specific violations here (OSHA did that quite extensively in its findings). Rather, I want to talk about safety training programs in general.
Come on, it’s not as...
02.11.2013
By Joan E. Collier
There is a bill floating around Montana that would require the state workers’ compensation fund to use its surplus to pay down a 20-year-old debt. Sounds reasonable, on the face of it. But opponents say it violates state law and could result in higher workers’ compensation premiums for employers.
SB 173 transfers the liability for workers’ compensation claims that occurred prior to July 1, 1990, from the state general fund to the Montana State Fund, a quasi-public state agency that writes workers’ compensation insurance for Montana businesses. The following excerpts from the fiscal impact study explains the why and wherefores of SB 173:
The Montana State Fund (MSF) manages claims for two groups, those with claims the occurred before July 1, 1990, and those with claims that occurred after July 1, 1990. The program for claims the occurred before July 1, 1990, is known as the Old Fund. The program for policyholders and claims that occurred after July 1, 1990, is known as the Montana State Fund (MSF). MSF is funded through policyholder premium and investment income. ...02.04.2013
By Joan E. Collier
The game, the commercials, the halftime show, the back stories, the brothers. And I kept thinking concussions, lawsuits, and workers’ compensation. I’ve been in insurance too long.
You know what I’m talking about: The more than 4,000 former professional football players and their wives who have filed a class action lawsuit against the National Football League, claiming that not enough was done in the past to inform the players about the dangers of concussions and that not enough is being done today to take care of them. This will take years to litigate, settle and pay out.
And then there are the individual workers’ compensation claims, most notably the ones filed in California. These claims are independent from the concussion claims against the NFL. The cases in California have been filed against individual football clubs, separate entities from the NFL.
California's workers' compensation system is more generous than other states, and it's easier to file there; professional athletes don't...
01.28.2013
By Joan E. Collier
North Dakota is considering legislation that would eliminate pain as evidence of an injury for certain workers’ compensation claims.
HB 1163, introduced just two days after the North Dakota Legislature convened on January 8, seeks to amend existing code relating to workers' compensation definitions of compensable injury. The current language in 65-01-02 Definitions states that, “Injuries attributable to a preexisting injury, disease, or other condition, including when the employment acts as a trigger to produce symptoms in the preexisting injury, disease, or other condition unless the employment substantially accelerates its progression or substantially worsens its severity.” HB 1163 would add this sentence, “Pain is a symptom and is not a substantial acceleration or substantial worsening of a preexisting injury, disease, or other condition.”
The bill is backed by Workforce Safety and Insurance (WSI), the monopolistic fund that provides coverage for all North Dakota employers; no private insurance or self-insurance funds are permitted in the state.
WSI Deputy Director Clare Carlson says the added language...
01.18.2013
By Joan E. Collier
We now are publishing a complimentary WCI Weekly newsletter. Emailed to subscribers every Friday, it highlights our most popular stories of the week and offers a second look at those features for readers who saw them when they were originally published, or an “in case you missed it” opportunity for people who missed them.
If you are not receiving our newsletter, we would be glad to send it to you. Just click here to join our mailing list.
While I am talking about communications, I also want to extend an invitation to all of you writers or would-be writers out there. At the heart of the Workers’ Compensation Institute mission is the goal of interacting with everyone in the industry and fostering understanding and information sharing among all the stakeholders. The WCI is non-partisan, non-political—all the non-words you can think of. We are pro-discussions, pro-sharing, and pro-active. All viewpoints are welcome. If you have been looking for a place to state your case...
01.07.2013
By Joan E. Collier
Florida’s Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty published the annual report on the state of our workers’ compensation market this past week. By almost all measures, we are doing pretty darn well.
Of the six most populous states, Florida is one of only two where private market insurers, rather than a state-sponsored residual market, dominate. Private carriers write 98 percent of the $1.784 billion market; self-insureds and the residual fund cover the rest. And no one carrier (250 actively write the coverage in Florida) has an over-abundance of market share. Bridgefield Employers Insurance Co. is top dog with an 11.4 percent of the market, followed by FCCI Insurance Co. with 6.13 percent. Both are Florida-grown and Florida-based companies.
It was not always such happy news in Florida. The market was in bad shape a decade ago. Then in 2003 lawmakers passed SB 50-A, a massive reform bill. The legislation addressed a number of issues. It limited the fees paid to attorneys to a contingent fee in cases involving the payment of indemnity payments. The 2003...
12.25.2012
By Joan E. Collier
According to estimates by the Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI), poor health and its impact on productivity costs the U.S. economy $576 billion per year. IBI arrived at the estimate using its Full Cost Estimator (FCE), a proprietary tool that calculates the full costs of health and productivity based on five large databases.
IBI broke down the $576 billion into three major areas: $117 billion in wage replacement (incidental absence due to illness, workers’ compensation, short-term and long-term disability); $232 billion in medical and pharmacy (employee group health and workers’ compensation medical treatments, employee group health pharmacy treatments); $227 billion in lost productivity (absence due to illness, reduced performance).
While companies routinely brag that “our employees are our greatest assets,” most U.S. businesses lag far behind those in other leading countries in “protecting” that asset with significant investments in wellness programs or in fostering a culture of a healthy balance of life and work.
An article in LifeScience magazine earlier this year asked the...
12.10.2012
By Joan E. Collier
They take insurance scamming seriously out in Oklahoma. Over the past several months, the state’s Insurance Department has outfitted its seven-member anti-fraud unit with guns, vehicles, and body armor. Total spent thus far: $180,000 for high-tech shotguns, bulletproof vests and seven police-package vehicles, equipment more often found on SWAT teams than insurance investigators.
Some observers think this is—forgive the expression—overkill.
"There's no reason for John Doak to be rolling up to a business or any other area in a SWAT-style vehicle mounted with shotguns," said state Sen. Harry Coates, R-Seminole. "That's insanity. This whole idea of wanting to act like they're a branch of the Department of Public Safety or a branch of law enforcement is insanity. They're not. They're in the stinking insurance oversight business.”
“Is Al Capone back in town?” asked Rep. Richard Morrissette, D-Oklahoma City. “Are we looking for stills in the woods? Come on, it’s a joke....
12.03.2012
Since 1988, December 1 has been declared World AIDS Day, a global effort to show support for those with the disease and to continue educational efforts. Worldwide, approximately 34 million people are living with a diagnosis of HIV; 1.1 million in the U.S. More than 25 million people between 1981 and 2007 have died from the virus, making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history.
Although the mutated virus that became the first human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) was reported by scientists in the 1930s, it was not until 1980 that the first AIDS case in the U.S. was reported to the Center for Disease Control. Because of its link to the homosexual community, the news set off a firestorm of activity by those armed with questionable “facts” and unsavory agendas.
I live in Florida, where one of the nation’s most shameful scenarios involving HIV unfolded in 1986. Three young brothers—Robert, Randy and Rickey Ray—were living a Mayberry-style life with their parents in rural Arcadia, where their parents had grown up. All three...
11.26.2012
By Joan E. Collier
There are now legal medical marijuana programs in 18 states plus Washington, D.C. And this month recreational marijuana became legal for adults in Washington and Colorado. The Colorado legislation was so popular that it received more votes than Barack Obama on the Nov. 6 ballot.
However, despite these state laws, on a federal level it remains illegal to possess marijuana under any circumstances. Although the Obama Administration has been disinclined to prosecute this type of violation—and has pledged to continue on that path—that does little to solve the legal quagmire these state laws have created.
It’s not as if the issue has crept up on us.
In 2000, voters in Colorado approved a constitutional amendment that legalized medical marijuana. Later, the state workers’ compensation statute was amended to impose a 50 percent loss of wages/benefit penalty if an employee was injured because he was found to be impaired by medical marijuana. There is an exception to the penalty for injuries resulting...
11.19.2012
By Joan E. Collier
A law in Pennsylvania demonstrates the problem of unintended consequences. In 2011, lawmakers approved Act 46 of 2011—the Firefighter Cancer Presumption Law—which designates cancer as an occupational disease for firefighters and enables them to receive workers’ compensation benefits if they develop cancer and can establish exposure to certain carcinogens at fire or hazmat incidents during their careers.
It went into effect on July 7, 2011, and provides a remarkably broad mandate. According to the Pennsylvania Firefighter Cancer Coalition:
The law applies to any cancer. Firefighters who have served four or more years will be entitled to a presumption that their cancer is job-related, similar to the process used when firefighters suffer from lung cancer, heart disease, or more recently, Hepatitis C. Firefighter cancer claims may be brought on behalf of any active or retired, career or volunteer firefighter who is being treated or has been treated for cancer, regardless of when the cancer was diagnosed or treated. The law extends the period for filing claims to 600 weeks after separation from...
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