The senate’s will to stabilize workers’ compensation insurance rates comes in response to several recent legal changes that have impacted the issue in different ways, leaving injured workers, injury lawyers, and employers up in the air. The NCCI first filed its rate in May and amended in June due to Supreme Court decisions on Castellanos v. Next Door Company and Westphal v. City of St. Petersburg as well as mandatory updates to the Florida Workers’ Health Care Provider Reimbursement (HCPR) Manual.
Employers have known changes would come ever since the court rulings, but they feel the changes are too severe. Attorneys are equally frustrated now that a scarcely-talked-about, exemption for injury claims as pertains to public records will cause them to struggle to solicit new clientele among injured workers.
