Latest Workers' Compensation Headlines

All the headlines from our Workers' Compensation Topic Page, ordered by recency.

California Commissioner Awards $34.9M to Fight Workers’ Comp Fraud

Oct 13 2016 // California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones today announced he has awarded $34.9 million in grants to 37 district attorney offices representing 44 counties across California to combat workers’ compensation insurance...

Looking at Injured Worker Benefits from California Comp Reforms out to 2020

Oct 13 2016 // Will workers’ compensation benefits from California’s sweeping reform law passed in 2012 help or hurt injured employees over the next four years? Some people didn’t want to wait until 2020 to answer that...

2 Workers Injured in Suburban Chicago Natural Gas Explosion

Oct 13 2016 // Authorities say a natural gas explosion and fire at a townhouse complex in suburban Chicago has injured two utility workers. The explosion in Romeoville, Illinois, was reported Tuesday evening. Authorities say the...

Delaware Approves Amended Workers’ Compensation Rate Filing

Oct 13 2016 // Delaware Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart approved the Delaware Compensation Rating Bureau (DCRB)’s workers’ compensation amended rate filing, which recommends no changes in the overall levels of...

OSHA Proposes 18 Changes to Safety Standards to Reduce Employer Costs

Oct 12 2016 // The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is proposing 18 changes to the agency’s recordkeeping, general industry, maritime and construction standards. The agency estimates that proposed revisions could save...

LCTA Now Writing Workers’ Comp in Mississippi

Oct 12 2016 // LCTA Workers’ Comp (LCTA), a Louisiana’s workers’ compensation provider, has expanded its geographic reach to include Mississippi. The company has also secured a license to write insurance in Arkansas. On...

BreweryPak Introduces Workers’ Comp Coverage for Breweries

Oct 12 2016 // BreweryPak, an insurance program designed for breweries, is now offering a new workers’ compensation coverage for their insured breweries across the country. Backed by Great American Insurance Group—which writes...

Workers’ Comp Rates in Idaho to Decrease for 2017

Oct 11 2016 // The Idaho Department of Insurance has received a proposal from the National Council on Compensation Insurance for an overall rate drop of 1.2 percent percent in workers’ compensation insurance to become effective...

LCTA Workers’ Comp Expands to Mississippi and Arkansas

Oct 11 2016 // LCTA Workers’ Comp announced that it will be expanding its geographic reach to include Mississippi and Arkansas. LCTA at the start of the month began writing lines of workers’ comp coverage to...

New Scrutiny for Oklahoma Workers’ Comp System

Oct 11 2016 // Three years after passage of sweeping legislation that revamped Oklahoma’s workers’ compensation system, courts are scrapping significant parts of the law in decisions that say the regulations violate the state...

It’s Official: Florida Workers’ Comp Rates Going Up Nearly 15%

Oct 11 2016 // The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) has issued a final order granting approval to the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) for an overall combined statewide average rate increase of 14.5 percent....

OSHA: 36 Workers Have Died on the Job in Illinois This Year

Oct 7 2016 // Federal safety regulators say 36 Illinois workers have died on the job since Jan. 1, 2016. That number represents an average of one life lost each week in the state. Since 2013, Illinois worker deaths have increased 28...

Texas Mutual’s Gergasko Named Best Large Company CEO in Central Texas

Oct 7 2016 // Texas Mutual Insurance Co.’s president and chief executive officer (CEO), Rich Gergasko, has been named the 2016 Best CEO of a large company in Central Texas by the Austin Business Journal. The ABJ has presented the...

Workers’ Comp Benefits for Injured Workers Reach Historic Lows: Report

Oct 6 2016 // Workers’ compensation benefits as a share of payroll have reached historically low levels, according to a new study released this week. Despite growth in employment during the economic recovery — and the...

Lien Consolidation Court, Fraud Part of Focus at California Comp Conference

Oct 5 2016 // The state’s top two labor officials were understandably high on the impact they expect two bills recently signed by Gov. Jerry Brown will have on California’s workers’ comp system and bad actors who have...

Houston Machinery Rebuilder Fined $155K for Workplace Hazards

Oct 4 2016 // A machinery rebuilding company in Houston was cited by federal safety regulators on Sept. 28 for exposing employees to workplace hazards. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration...

New Ohio Workers’ Comp Opioid Prescription Rule now in Effect

Oct 4 2016 // A new rule governing the prescribing of opioids to treat Ohioans injured on the job took effect on Oct. 1, the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) reported. The changes target the prevention of opioid...

California Workers’ Comp Board Submits Amended Rate Filing to Department of Insurance

Oct 4 2016 // The WCIRB has submitted a pure premium rate filing to the California Department of Insurance proposing Jan. 1, 2017 advisory pure premium rates lower than the corresponding industry average and less than the average...

Kansas Workers’ Comp Rates to Drop Next Year

Oct 4 2016 // Kansas Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer announced that many business owners in the state will pay less for workers’ compensation insurance in 2017. It will be the second consecutive year for workers’ comp rate...

Berkshire’s Applied Underwriters Defends Workers’ Comp Products, Says Brokers Should Not Be at Risk

Oct 3 2016 // Legal and regulatory squabbles in New York, California and other states involving Berkshire Hathaway and its Applied Underwriter affiliates over particular workers’ compensation products should not have any negative...