Welcome to your weekly WCI Newsletter. We have selected the top stories that appeared on our website this week to help you stay up to date on what is happening in the world of workers' compensation and insurance. Enjoy.
WorkersCompensation.com Enters News Publication Partnership with WCI
Starting this week, WorkersCompensation.com Premium Media Services will be providing current news and blog content for the Workers' Compensation Institute. It will be available on the WCI website, located at www.wci360.com, as well as through the WCI Weekly Newsletter.
Read more.
PA Announces Workers' Comp Insurance Rate Cut
Wolf Administration cabinet secretaries for the Insurance Department and Labor & Industry today announced Pennsylvania businesses will see another cut in workers' compensation insurance rates while maintaining benefit levels for injured workers.
Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller and Labor & Industry Secretary Kathy Manderino made the announcement at an event at Global Advanced Metals in Boyertown.
Workers' comp insurance rates will drop 6.21 percent, effective April 1, reducing a key expense for many companies and saving Pennsylvania businesses an estimated $150 million this year.
Read more.
Constitutionality of California's IMR Procedure Not a 'Slam Dunk'
By John Gerboth
On March 20, California's Third District Court of appeals heard oral arguments in the case of Ramirez v. WCAB. The case involved a constitutional challenge to California's Independent Medical Review (IMR) procedure. (A more detailed review of the constitutionality of the IMR procedure can be
found here). Less than 10 days later, the court issued its decision upholding the procedure's constitutionality on March 29.
There were a couple of procedural arguments involving the joinder of a necessary party and waiver of arguments on appeal that the court dealt with quickly in its decision. The court held that there were no missing necessary parties, and that all the arguments had been properly reserved for appeal. The decision then addressed the more substantive issues of law.
Ellen Sims Langille, General Counsel for the California Workers' Compensation Institute, a research group that analyses issues and trends surrounding California workers' compensation matters, attended the oral arguments and offered some observations in an email to WorkersCompensation.com.
Read more.
Overcoming with Community
By Mark Pew
I spent some time last weekend going through some of my older blogposts and read "It's Personal" that I published on June 30, 2015. In it I relate a conversation with a lady on a shuttle bus who lost her 29 year old son to a prescription drug overdose. And someone whose brother became addicted to opioids after a Work Comp knee replacement, fortunately now clean and sober. And a vendor whose brother-in-law is addicted to the point where his family doesn't trust him with their kids. Read more.
Dissolving MT State Fund Dead in the Water... For Now
By Angela Underwood
The Montana State Fund isn't going anywhere regardless of Senator Eric Moore's (R-Miles City) proposal last week to dissolve the state's largest workers' compensation insurance carrier.
The threat to dissolve the $1.6 billion-dollar state fund with
SB 371 days after the group announced a five-percent decrease in workers' comp costs and negative rate was a shock to some.
According to the senator, there would be more competition and consumer choice if the fund was replaced by privatized insurance. Laurence Hubbard, President and CEO of the fund, disagreed on dissolving the fund, formed in 1915, which now insures approximately 26,000 policyholders and covers about 10,000 injured workers per year.
Read more.
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