On March 14, 2017, the Florida House of Representatives’ Insurance & Banking Subcommittee passed HB 1107 which provides personal information protections for injured workers.
This bill exempts from the public record private and personal information regarding a worker’s injury or death. This in effect shields injured workers and their families from attorneys hoping to take on their case.
The bill will now move on to the Oversight, Transparency & Administration Subcommittee for its next hearing.
Click Here to read more about the proposed changes.
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Also on March 14, the House of held hearings to discuss IB S1 – a proposed committee bill that addresses the issues within Florida’s Workers’ Compensation law that have recently been deemed unconstitutional, specifically rate increases, attorney fees, and claimant benefits.
The more substantive changes to the State’s current workers’ compensation system, include:
- Allowing claimants to pay their attorney’s fees directly;
- Providing criteria for the award of a fee in the event it deviates from the fee schedule while taking into account awards from JCC rulings;
- Removing the 104 week limitation and allowing a combined total of 260 weeks of temporary total disability (TTD) and temporary partial disability (TPD);
- Eliminating charge-based reimbursements for outpatient care facilities and reimbursing those services at 200% of Medicare for unscheduled care and 160% for scheduled care; and
- Requiring petitions for benefits to contain more information and requiring a JCC to dismiss a petition for lack of specificity, without prejudice.
To weigh in on this issue, the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) recently provided a preliminary estimate on the effect of this PCB noting that the claimant attorney’s fee and medical fee schedule provisions could both result in a moderate to sizable decrease in costs while the TTD and TPD provisions would result in a small increase.
Click Here to read more about the proposed changes.
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Separately, on March 3, 2017, State Senator Rob Bradley filed SB 1582 in which insurers would be allowed to independently research and file their own workers compensation insurance rates in Florida – effectively encouraging them to compete against each other on premium rates.
The bill would also:
- Cap the hourly rate awarded by judges in workers comp cases to $250 an hour for attorneys who represent injured workers;
- Require carriers to authorize or decline, rather than respond to, certain requests for authorization within a specified time;
- Revise conditions under which the Office of the Judges of Compensation Claims must dismiss petitions for benefits;
- Add prospective loss costs to a list of reviewable matters in certain proceedings by appellate courts; and
- Require copies of prospective loss costs to be filed with the Office of Insurance Regulation.
You can read more about the SB 1582 HERE.
Johns Eastern will continue to keep you updated on the status of these bills with updates on what it may mean for you and your employees.