Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation (BWC) Loses a Major Court Case

I had previously posted about how the BWC of Ohio is not acting as a true insurer and is using number voodoo to charge smaller employers outrageous premiums while giving certain employer groups enormous discounts. Ohio small businesses were being discriminated against due to the their size in the area of Workers Compensation premiums.

Last week, a judge ruled against the BWC and issued a restraining order blocking the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation from implementing its prospective group rating plan for policies incepting next year. The bureau must implement a retrospective rating plan based on loss history for group policies rather than its established method of determining premiums by anticipating future losses. I still do not understand how they can predict future losses without looking at the prior losses. As I said earlier, it was all number voodoo.

As I have said many times before in this blog, monopolistic state funds are becoming dinosaurs in the area of Workers Compensation. If a private insurance carrier operated in the same manner as the WSI in North Dakota or the BWC in Ohio, the insurance commissioner would fine them and/or place them in receivership.

An insurance system cannot be operated like a government agency in the current Workers Comp marketplace. There are four monopolistic state funds. I wonder how long they can survive.