* Background is here if you need it. From the Illinois News Network…

A report from Oregon shows that workers’ compensation costs are falling in Illinois, but a manufacturing group said employers here have yet to see any savings.

The Illinois Trial Lawyers Association heralded a report this week from the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services that ranked Illinois workers’ compensation costs at the 22nd highest in the nation, down from the eighth highest. […]

Illinois Manufacturers’ Association’s Mark Denzler said while the industry group has seen the Oregon report, the state’s employers haven’t seen the savings.

“We talk to companies on a daily basis who actually pay workers’ comp and write the checks for it and they have not seen significant reductions in workers’ compensation costs,” Denzler said.

Love me some Denzler, but show us actual numbers.

*** UPDATE *** With a hat tip to a commenter, these are the premium rates before they dropped from 8th highest to 22nd highest in the nation. You can plainly see premiums were already going down. From the Illinois Department of Insurance…

       

31 Comments - Perrid - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 9:32 am: The ranking is relative, meaning that other state’s could just be getting more expensive faster than IL, not that IL is getting cheaper. And getting costs from growing is a form of savings. - Ducky LaMoore - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 9:32 am: I’ve never paid WC in any other state. In my few years of paying it, the payment was stable. This year, my payment was down about 10%. There are a lot of factors that affect WC costs. So I don’t know what to credit for it, but it is down. - NoGifts - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 9:50 am: A single or few anecdotes are not data, but a whole bunch of anecdotes systematically collected and added to a file are data. - PublicServant - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 9:52 am: Some people I’ve talked to have told me Denzler doesn’t know what he’s talking about. - wordslinger - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 9:55 am: You’d think the state industry group would track that sort of thing and have hard, comprehensive numbers handy to make their case? What else are they doing? But it’s much easier to begin with your desired conclusion, then backfill with talking points and alleged anecdotes for your “rationale.” The tronc edit board has been at it for years. - the Patriot - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 9:58 am: In 2010 IL had 50186 cases filed. This year to date the number is below 35000. More than a 20% reduction. IL has more work comp insurers than any state in the nation. This is because the savings from the 2011 amendments were not required to be passed to employers. NCCI the insurance industry group has recommended premium cuts but the carriers are pocketing the money. The legislature was told this would happen but Madigan elected to ignore it and knowingly drafted a bill that would cut workers, doctors, lawyers to the benefit of insurance companies. Solution: Employers shop your coverage and let the marketplace do the work. With over 300 carriers writing in IL right now, the competition will eventually drive prices down. - Arsenal - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 9:59 am: ==The ranking is relative== Absolutely, but so is some of the rationale for further WC reform. “Our WC costs are too high to compete with other states, so we’re losing business to them.” If our costs are stable, but theirs are increasing, that still gives us a competitive advantage over them. (But it means nothing for, say, an entrepreneur who’s options are 1) Start a business in IL; or 2) Start No Business At All.) - DuPage - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 10:10 am: They should make the insurance companies open their books to state regulators. - A Jack - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 10:10 am: Oklahoma was tied at 8 with Illinois, but also fell dramatically. OK reformed WC in 2014 with a big part of the reform being a faster claim process. Our 2011 reform had a few things that may have also spend up the process a bit. I would imagine a slow, complicated process could add quite a bit to the cost with additional legal fees and possible delays in treatment. So perhaps that is an area that the GA can look at for further reform. - A Jack - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 10:16 am: A part of the 2011 reform was that the Department of Insurance was to collect numbers to avoid the reliance on the “Oregon Report.” So there are numbers collected for Illinois if the IMA wants to try to bolster its claim. But of course those numbers might not help the IMA’s cause, so they may have decided to ignore them. - 360 Degree TurnAround - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 10:21 am: The IMA could enact work comp insurance reform to help their employers realize the savings. - 360 Degree TurnAround - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 10:23 am: Governor Rauner always talked with people on a daily basis who told him to keep up what he’s doing, keep fighting that corruption. - Anonymous - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 10:36 am: There are a bunch of blue states where real WC reform has been enacted, and premiums have dropped. It’s not going to happen in IL because certain interest groups need a bogeyman kept alive. - Perrid - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 10:51 am: @thePatriot, “Madigan elected to ignore it and knowingly drafted a bill that would cut workers, doctors, lawyers to the benefit of insurance companies.” Uh, I seem to remember Madigan proposing a state sponsored WC insurer to add competition to force lower rates during the impasse, and Rauner ignoring it and calling it phony reform. - Dan Johnson - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 11:06 am: I hope Laura Fine’s bill to create a non-profit WC insurance co-op passes next year to give employers a public option as it seems like the for-profit WC insurance carriers (most of them out-of-state? that’s a guess) are still making a lot of money. - A Jack - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 11:23 am: It takes some digging at the Illinois Department of Insurance website, but the latest Worker’s Compensation oversite report available from 2017 on page 5 show that the premium rate for worker’s comp has been on a steady decrease since 2012. So premiums are headed in the right direction. - Anonymous - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 11:46 am: Well, Rauner has appointed some pretty good arbitrators… - Anonymous - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 12:18 pm: So, the numbers still show that Illinois is 26 percent higher than the average state? - Juice - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 12:25 pm: Anonymous @ 12:18, that was from the 2016 study. The DOI report from 2017 would not have access to Oregon’s 2018 study. For 2018, Illinois is 6% higher than the median, with a rate of $1.80 - Perrid - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 12:28 pm: @Anonymous, OK, first the numbers from IL DoI is from 2016, so “still show” is slightly misleading, and second the median is NOT the same as the average. - Still Waiting - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 12:33 pm: Our district just rebid its insurance package. Our WC premium dropped 40% from last year even though we’ve added employees. The bids were all over the board, though, with the highest bid being an 8% increase over last year. - PublicServant - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 12:45 pm: ===give employers a public option=== Public option has a certain ring to it. I’m thinking we ought to give people the public option too. People are people too, you know. Just sayin. - wordslinger - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 1:06 pm: –With a hat tip to a commenter, these are the premium rates before they dropped from 8th highest to 22nd highest in the nation. You can plainly see premiums were already going down. – Isn’t it amazing that the IMA can’t find that public information on their own? You’d think they’d be all over that stuff. - Anonymous - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 1:06 pm: It’s tricky to compare averages across state lines. Some states have different mixes of industry. Oregon, for example, has a larger share of workers in lumber than Illinois does. - Chicagonk - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 1:42 pm: The suggestion to bid out your work comp coverage is a good one (especially if you only have employees in Illinois and do not self-insure any of the risk). The Illinois insurance market is one of the most competitive in the country and that means that there are a lot of options out there if you go to market. The overall market is really soft right now, so if you haven’t bid your insurance in a few years, now is a great time to do it. - the Patriot - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 1:47 pm: The spike after 2006 was due to a hike in benefits and liberalization by Blagojevich. We then whacked in 2011. Major employers are not coming due to another reform. If you are dropping a billion dollars in a plan in IL, you want stability and for the last 12 years we have just been a swinging pendulum. Part of the 11 amendments took away 6 year Arbitrator terms and make them get reappointed every 3. This is highly volatile as they basically serve at the whim of the governor. And lets face it, if you want stability anything that relies on an IL governor is not something want. - Sean Stott - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 2:20 pm: IMA President Greg Baise did an interview with Terry Martin at Illinois Channel yesterday and continued to decry the cost of workers’ compensation in Illinois. At about the 25:20 mark, Mr. Baise acknowledges that Illinois is now 22nd in the country relative to cost, according to the recent study conducted by the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services - the very study that the IMA, Governor Rauner, and others have used as their measuring stick justifying their quest for further workers’ compensation benefit cuts and, in some cases, denying injured workers benefits altogether. IMA VP Mark Denzler also gave an impromptu interview yesterday to INN, offering only anecdotal complaints, as you correctly noted in your post today. http://www.illinoischannel.org/2018/11/29/the-future-promise-and-challenges-of-illinois-manufacturing/ Compare these statements to Mr. Baise’s testimony at the May 5, 2015 House Workers’ Compensation Committee of the Whole, where he advocates that Illinois be brought back to the “middle of the pack”. In a joint statement from the business community, including the IMA, lauding the 2011 amendments to the Workers’ Comp Act those business groups said, “This represents the most substantial reform of the workers’ compensation system in decades.” It is clear from empirical data that the 2011 amendments have achieved the goal of driving down workers’ compensation costs in Illinois and have achieved the stated aspirations of the business representatives to bring Illinois into the “middle of the pack” relative to those costs. Rather than continuing to seek further draconian cuts - or cuts of any kind - we would prefer that the business community and insurers that have benefitted from the associated savings show gratitude to the injured workers whose benefits were slashed and the medical providers whose reimbursements for treating those workers were cut by 30%. - 360 Degree TurnAround - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 2:43 pm: Wow, I’m not sure the business community has much credibility left on this issue any more. - Sean Stott - Thursday, Nov 29, 18 @ 3:17 pm: @ Anonymous 1:06 - You are absolutely correct that it can be difficult to compare states’ costs due to their differing mixes of industry. That said, the Oregon has study long been used by the business community as their highlighter to underscore their contention that Illinois is out of step in terms of WC costs. What we can say about the Oregon study (in that it comes out every 2 years) is that acts as somewhat of a constant and that study shows Illinois to be exactly where the business community wants Illinois to be, “in the middle of the pack.” - NorthsideNoMore - Friday, Nov 30, 18 @ 1:47 am: Just guessing but would the insurance premiums come down very slowly as those provider companies use tables that balance rates over years ? Reform changes and rate reductions dont occur at the same pace there is a book of business the providers are using No? - gg.gg - Friday, Nov 30, 18 @ 4:50 am: 1996. 23. 2009. BARRETO, Pedro Henrique Quitete. http://gg.gg/c6v2z Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.