NIOSH Interested In Workers Compensation Data
NIOSH (National Institute For Occupational Safety and Health) which is part of the federal government (Center for Disease Control) recently announced they were beginning to collect Workers Comp data. John Howard MD Director announced that Workers Comp costs the US over $250 billion. The study he quoted was shown to be in error due to the type of comparable data.
Liberty Mutual has shown to be very accurate in assessing insurance statistics has indicated that the total cost for Workers Compensation was $50 billion. In fact the Liberty Mutual Study showed that the cost of disabling claims had fallen approximately 31% in the same time frame as the inflated $250 billion study.
There are many references to the Federalization of Workers Compensation in this blog. The Federal Insurance Office (FIO) that is now under the CMS and even the CMS is now collecting data from the Workers Comp Medicare/Medicaid Set Asides.
The controversial Death of Workers Comp articles in this blog also point out the fact that it is now very easy with the Healthcare Act to add in 24 hour healthcare in place of Workers Compensation insurance. Also, could the state health exchanges also offer Workers Comp or the 24 hour healthcare coverage?
This does not mean the end of Workers Comp. This just means that if anyone in the WC arena is sitting behind their desk and saying everything is going to be the same tomorrow as it is today may have a shocker coming.
Flexibility and adaptability will need to be added to any insurance personnel’s toolkit in the coming months and years.
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