Chaos for Workers' Compensation Programs--The Elimination of Social Security Numbers?

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is readying a fraud prevention initiative that removes Social Security Numbers (SSN) from Medicare cards to help combat identity theft and safeguard taxpayer dollars. The question remains whether the elimination will cause chaos in state workers' compensation programs since the SSNs have historically been utilized as personal identifiers.

Troubled

Historically California with its huge share of the nation's workers' compensaton market defines the future course of regulation and reform. The analysis offered by David DePaolo is indeed troubling. Today's post is shared from http://daviddepaolo.blogspot.com

The message I heard at the California Workers' Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau's Annual Meeting yesterday in San Francisco was a mixed one, but my ultimate conclusion isn't positive.

The bottom line - frictional costs associated with the most recent reform effort seem to have introduced more frictional costs than savings, and the likelihood is that when Oregon does it's rate normalized bi-annual survey, California may just come out on top as the most expensive state with a troublesome delivery history and questionable profitability for carriers.

Ugh...

Here's a sort of good news, bad news synopsis, not necessarily in any particular order:

While there has been a dramatic reduction in claim frequency (fancy insurance-speak for the number of injuries per given period), down some 80% over the past 40 years, California has seen frequency level off and even grow a small percentage where the rest of the nation continues to experience continuing declines. It seems that this frequency deviation is attributable to the Greater Los Angeles area - a geographic bubble driving the state's negative claims picture.

It seems that the frequency trend in indemnity claims in the LA area is attributable to continuous trauma...

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