Workers Comp

Pa. announces midyear comp loss cost filings

Louise Esola

November 14, 2018 Reprints

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Pa. announces midyear comp loss cost filings

The Pennsylvania Insurance Department received midyear workers compensation loss cost filings of 5.24% and 10.02% for Jan. 1, 2019, from the Pennsylvania Compensation Rating Bureau, which incorporated a new state law on how disability is managed for injured workers and a needed modification to a rate set earlier this year, the state’s Insurance Commissioner Jessica Altman announced on Tuesday.

The first filing follows Gov. Tom Wolf’s signing of Act 111, reinstated impairment ratings for injured workers after the state Supreme Court in 2017 deemed them unconstitutional. The PCRB, an independent bureau, which makes filings to the Insurance Department on behalf of the nearly 325 companies that write workers comp insurance in Pennsylvania, filed a proposed 5.24% reduction in overall loss costs as a result of this new law, according to a statement released by the Insurance Department.

The PCRB also filed a second midyear loss cost revision — a decrease in overall loss costs of 10.02% — to modify an earlier loss cost filing submitted in November 2017, effective on April 1, 2018. In late October 2018, the PCRB identified the need to modify the filing, and notified the Insurance Department, according to the statement

The department said it is “not possible to say how this issue may have impacted the rates paid by employers since April 1, 2018,” and is now reviewing the new filings.

“As soon as we learned of this issue, we began working with the PCRB to encourage a prompt new filing with the department, so we could begin our review and approval process as soon as possible,” Commissioner Altman said in a statement. “We also immediately began investigating the issue and will take appropriate actions once the investigation has concluded.”