Free Republic

The Obama administration is ironing out the details of dictating compensation across the financial services sector, even at banks who have NOT received the burdensome TARP funds. Once done with the financial services sector, will Obama move on to dictating terms across the entire private sector?

California's Legislative Analysts Office recently reported that the state faces an unfunded liability of $40 billion to $70 billion (and growing) for state employees' retiree health costs, which would require $6 billion a year for 30 years to fund. This comes on the heels of the Los Angeles Unified School District's doubling its estimated unfunded liability for such costs to $10 billion. Those reports ratchet up the magnitude of the state's deferred-compensation disaster from a September review that found California's biggest government agencies faced over $100 billion in unfunded liabilities for existing pension, health care and workers' comp commitments (itself...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Workers' compensation insurance rates paid by California employers have dropped an average of about 26 percent since lawmakers instituted a series of cost-cutting bills beginning in 2003, but bigger reductions are possible, Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi said Monday. "The full effect of reforms have not yet been realized to employers," he said in a conference call with reporters. "Further reductions are possible and should happen." Garamendi estimates that the claims insurers have paid for work-related injuries has dropped 36.5 percent since mid-2003, but insurance companies have reported overall base-rate reductions of about 26.8 percent in the same...

State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi yesterday urged insurers to cut their workers' compensation rates by 18 percent July 1 to reflect the savings they have received from recent regulatory reforms. An insurance industry spokeswoman responded that double-digit reductions are likely, although not necessarily as deep as those Garamendi recommends. "Eighteen percent is not unreasonable," said Nicole Mahrt, public affairs director for the Western Region American Insurance Association. "It's higher than what some companies are able to do, but some companies are already planning cuts higher than that." Twice a year – on Jan. 1 and July 1 – the state...

Hard-pressed employers could get a big break on workers' compensation premiums later this year if insurers follow a rate recommendation issued by a key agency Wednesday. The Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau in San Francisco, an industry-backed private organization that provides statistical analysis, recommended that insurance companies drop their premiums by about 10% beginning in July. The bureau is expected to make the recommendation official Friday. If, as is likely, such a cut is reflected in rates submitted by insurance companies to regulators, employers would see the first double-digit decline resulting from a two-year campaign to overhaul the state's system...

California business owners saw the average annual premium for workers' compensation insurance drop between 13.9 percent and 16.6 percent in the last six months, according to records from the state Department of Insurance. These would be the first double-digit percentage rate cuts since deregulation in 1995, savings that arose out of legislative overhauls the last two sessions. "Rates are coming down. Right now, it appears medical cost inflation has been impacted by the reforms. Medical costs were one of the primary drivers pushing rates up," said Jack Hannan, a spokesman for the Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California, an...

California employers paid 38 percent more for workers' compensation insurance this year than those in the second most expensive state, Alaska, a new study shows. The nationwide survey said the gap between California and the rest of the country widened further in the past two years. In 2002, the state's employers, while still facing the highest rates in the nation, paid 16 percent more than the No. 2 state of Florida. On average, employers in January 2004 paid an average of $6.08 per $100 of payroll for premiums - $1.69 more than Alaska companies, according to a biennial survey of...

A judge who can't handle "deadlines, attorneys' and parties' harassment and conflicts (with) angry, hostile litigants" probably ought to find another line of work. But a state workers' compensation judge – actually, an arbiter of money and medical benefits in workers' comp cases – has filed a workers' comp claim for, according to The Sacramento Bee, "injuries to the heart and psyche." And hers is hardly the most glaring case of judges working the workers' comp system to their personal advantage. More's the pity that it's lawful. In fact, the cost of workers' comp as a percentage of payroll at...

A death threat threw workers' compensation Judge Ruby Theophile into such an emotional tailspin that she filed her very own workers' comp claim. Even one of her doctors remarked on the irony. The situation "seems unusual if not unique," psychiatrist Warren Jones wrote in his evaluation of the Pasadena judge. It was not unique - nor even unusual. California's 150 workers' compensation judges are six times more likely to file on-the-job injury cases than their judicial counterparts in state government, a Bee investigation has found. These gatekeepers of cash and medical benefits for injured workers have claimed injuries from rearranging...

From 2000 to 2003, California workers' compensation insurance premiums posted double-digit percentage increases -- helping to flat-line the state economy. Now, four months after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 899 to reform workers' compensation, premiums are dropping by double digits -- facilitating the California recovery. Bipartisan cooperation between the governor and the Legislature produced workers' compensation reform that is delivering results. (snip) Even though some of the most important reforms do not take effect until January, the early results show a system already on the mend, and it is worth looking at how far we have come. The State...