Tallahassee, FL – Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty recently issued an Order notifying the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) that its 1% proposed annual rate filing increase in Florida’s workers’ compensation insurance rates has been disapproved. After a careful review and analysis by the Office of Insurance Regulation (Office), the filing reflected an increase in production expenses that were not supported by the information submitted by NCCI.
NCCI can re-submit the rate filing to the Office and a 0.7% increase would be approved to become effective on January 1, 2014 for new and renewal business. This approval would represent a 56.0% cumulative reduction in Florida workers’ compensation rates as a result of legislative reforms introduced in 2003 and keep Florida rates comparable to other states.
“Although a marginal rate increase is necessary for worker’s compensation insurance in Florida, the underlying factors causing the spike in rate increases over the last four years still merit legislative attention,” stated Florida Insurance Commissioner, Kevin M. McCarty. “Evidence from the hearing demonstrated that rates could be reduced by as much as 8.3% if the reimbursement for hospital inpatient, hospital outpatient and ambulatory surgical centers were statutorily limited to 120% of Medicare reimbursement.”
For more information about the 2014 NCCI annual rate filing, visit the Office’s “Past Public Rate Hearings By Date” website page.
Source: FL OIR