Rob Bradley, the Republican State Senator from Fleming Island, says that worker’s compensation rates will most likely remain high, and he says that his primary goal as well as that of others in the senate is to stabilize rates. Rates have been volatile in Florida’s recent history ever since the Supreme Court passed rulings in 2003 that disapproved previous reforms and sent both government and employers scrambling for control over the workers’ compensation system.
The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR) undid a previous filing for a 19.6% increase on behalf of insurers on September 27, 2016, which was filed by the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI). The OIR argued that there was no justification for such a large increase on policies. As such, the OIR revised this filing by lowering the figure to 14.5%.
An official statement made by the OIR: “After a thorough review of the workers’ compensation insurance rate filing by the [NCCI] and careful consideration of hundreds of public comments and testimony received from interested stakeholders, [the OIR] has issued an order that gives contingent approval to an overall combined average statewide rate increase of 14.5 percent versus the requested 19.6 percent.”
