Oklahoma's CompSource Will Not Be Privatized (Yet)

Oklahoma's House of Representatives did not make a final vote on privatizing that state's largest Workers Comp carrier. I have been a big proponent of privatizing Workers Compensation after seeing successes in Nevada and West Virginia.

West Virginia helped found Brickstreet that ran as a monopolistic carrier for a few years before the market was opened up completely. West Virginia modeled their program after Nevada's switch to an open market. Brickstreet still insures all of the governmental employees for Workers Comp. The West Virgina's governmental contract will be opened up for bidding to the market in 2012. A recent article by George Hohmann of the Daily mail pointed out that Bricksreet had a profit drop of well over 60% from the previous year.

CompSource is not a monopolistic carrier. It is more similar to where Brickstreet is now in evolving to a private carrier. I have friends and family in Oklahoma that actually depend on the market coverage provided by CompSource for their small business Workers Compensation needs. Brickstreet quadrupled the rates for the very small businesses in West Virginia as they instituted a floor of $750 per company.

I have posted opinions that agreed and disagreed with privatizing CompSource. There are other solutions to Oklahoma's problem that I will post next time.