Sep
8

Good news Friday…Build America, Buy America

You may not have heard of the Build America, Buy America Act…here’s why it is good news indeed for US manufacturing and construction – and employment.

BABA lays out requirements for US content in federally funded infrastructure projects, requirements that specify how much Made in the USA content is needed to qualify for Federal funding.  

BABA impacts at a minimum,

  • the structures, facilities, and equipment for roads, highways, and bridges;
  • public transportation;
  • dams, ports, harbors, and other maritime facilities;
  • intercity passenger and freight railroads;
  • freight and intermodal facilities; airports;
  • water systems, including drinking water and wastewater systems;
  • electrical transmission facilities and systems;
  • utilities;
  • broadband infrastructure; and buildings and real property; and
  • structures, facilities, and equipment that generate, transport, and distribute energy including EV charging.

All iron and steel must be produced in the US…all manufactured products must have at least 55% minimum Made in the USA content, all construction materials must be “produced in the US” AND manufacturing processes must take place within the US.

per capita funding

Building trades welcomed the new guidance, with Nevada, West Virginia, Mississippi,  Louisiana, Wyoming and Tennessee among the states that will benefit  from new hiring and vastly improved: 

  • roads,
  • bridges, 
  • wildfire protection, 
  • electricity transmission, and
  • broadband.

Check out your state’s funding here.

What does this mean for you?

Better roads, schools, broadband; more good jobs; and more workers’ comp premiums and claims. 


Sep
7

Mergers, acquisitions, and reasons therefore

M&A activity in the world of workers’ comp services has been somewhat quiet of late, although there’s been some under-the-radar activity that – taken together – shows consolidation continues.

That’s no surprise…workers’ comp is a classic mature industry with all the attributes thereof. Scale is key, margins are tight, cost-cutting is constant, and funds for innovation scarce.

Here’s a quick roundup of recent activity from various sources…

Sedgwick is rumored to be doing a re-capitalization, another word for current investors cashing out a chunk of their equity. In my view TPAs are one of the very   few workers’ comp service sectors that have growth opportunity, so terms may be favorable. However, interest rates are still a drag (recaps almost always involve taking on a lot of debt) and of late private equity (PE) investors seem really hesitant to close on deals.

Of note, WC is just one of the insurance lines handled by the giant TPA – those other lines are in rough shape (more on that in a future post). I don’t know whether P&C carriers will be more or less interested in outsourcing work to TPAs for non-WC lines, but those calculations will undoubtedly weigh on potential investors’ enthusiasm for a Sedgwick transaction.

Ametros inhabits another sector that could be quite promising – handling funds from claims settlements. One of the extremely few companies that really gets marketing (which is NOT sales support or writing proposals), Ametros is rumored to be in the final stages of a sale/recap. While I like the company and the sector, reality is major growth is really dependent on what CMS does – or doesn’t do – re Medicare Set-Asides. CMS’ continued lack of a coherent, consistent, and clear policy on if/when MSAs are required for what lines of insurance is nonsensical, frustrating, and a disservice to we taxpayers.

Enlyte/Mitchell/Genex just completed the acquisition of Therapy Direct, a rather small PT management firm. Expect TD to be fully absorbed into Enlyte subsidiary Apricus with most functions assumed by Apricus’ current staff. Unfortunately, that’s just the way these things work; Enlyte gets a few more millions of revenue and reduces costs by cutting expenses. Classic mature industry growth…buying revenue to grow top-line. 

Lastly, any potential transactions for One Call are likely on hold pending resolution or conclusion of various legal issues involving current investors; word is some are suing others.

There are a couple others in various stages…will wait and see if things progress or not.

What does this mean for you?

In a highly mature industry, it’s

Scale. Efficiency. Differentiation. Service. 

 

 


Sep
6

Scary stuff…COVID death details

A just-released study found striking differences in death rates from COVID based on political party affiliation.

The study reviewed “538,159 deaths in individuals aged 25 years and up in Florida and Ohio between March 2020 and December 2021…”

more from JAMA

“Between March 2020 and December 2021, excess death rates were 2.8 percentage points (15%) higher for Republican voters compared with Democratic voters…(Table)….political party affiliation became a substantial factor only after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults in the US.”

After April 1, 2021, when all adults were eligible for vaccines in Florida and Ohio, this gap widened…with excess deaths among Republican voters 43% higher than among Democratic voters.

(you can get a higher resolution view here)

What does this mean for you?

Take a step back and consider how it came to this. 

 


Sep
1

Good news Friday – and implications for workers’ comp

Inflation. Employment. Manufacturing jobs. Wages.

All are in waaaaay better shape than they were a couple years ago.

What’s downright weird is how gloomy many are…in the face of pretty good news on many fronts. So let’s start the weekend off with what’s REALLY going on…

Inflation dropped to 3% – a third of what it was in June of 2022…when it was 9% –  “we’ve made a lot of progress [reducing inflation] without much pain. And I think that’s what’s critical so far.” says Stephen Juneau, an economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Employment  – there are one and a half jobs open for each unemployed worker which a) means there is NO recession and b) employers are in better shape than they were 18 months ago when there were more than 2 jobs per unemployed worker.

US manufacturing is roaring back...construction of new factories is at an all-time high and companies are adding over 400,000 new manufacturing jobs this year.

Wages are also going up – adjusted for inflation annual median household income was up over $3,000 over the last three years.

What does this mean for you?

Things are going pretty darn well.

As for the implications for work comp…this from a post in August.

Hundreds of billions of dollars is flowing into infrastructure, investment that has already created ninety thousand jobs in:

  • construction,
  • transportation improvements,
  • highway, bridge and road maintenance and replacement, and
  • heavy industry.

And many more jobs are on the way. (check out where this is happening here).

These are very well-paid, high-frequency and high-severity jobs.

This means premiums will increase as will claims and claims costs. And this will continue for years.

 


Aug
30

Medicare drug price negotiations – implications abound!

Medicare will negotiate drug prices, Big pharma’s really upset…AARP is really happy…what’s the REAL story?

Briefly…One of the key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act authorized Medicare to negotiate drug prices for 10 medications. Those 10 meds have been identified, and the howls of protest from big pharma are deafeningbut our profits!!!!!

chart credit arsTechnica

(Pharma is the most profitable sector in the economy with a gross profit margin double that of non-pharma companies)

Implications

for taxpayers, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports taxpayers will save $160 billion by reducing how much Medicare pays for drugs

for millions of Medicare recipients, drug prices and out of pocket expenses for those 10 drugs will drop by thousands of dollars…seniors currently pay up to $6,497 in out-of-pocket costs per year for these meds.

(due to the Inflation Reduction Act, starting in 2025 Medicare beneficiaries’ annual out of pocket drug costs will be capped at $2000)

for payers, the picture is pretty very complicated...netting it out, “these steps would lead to a higher MFP [maximum fair price] and less or no impact on the drug’s…commercial net prices [after rebates]…” [emphasis added]

lest you feel sorry for big pharma, you should know that the ten medications are “older drugs and drugs that have really been blockbusters in the Medicare program. So the companies that have made these products have really reaped handsome profits from those drugs for many years, before they’re even eligible for negotiation.” cite

oh, and about Pharma’s complaint that this will hamper innovation, experts disagree…overall changes to Medicare’s Part D drug program “will probably have a positive impact on drug innovation, especially in areas that address the unmet health needs of high-cost Medicare beneficiaries”


Aug
28

Fentanyl, immigration, and home health care

Illegal immigrants are NOT smuggling in fentanyl across the Southern border.

Americans are.

Yet half Americans  – and 6 out of ten Republicans – think it’s those damn immigrants.

I’ve been yelling about opioids of all types for almost two decades…and avoiding it for the last year or so because I’m burnt out on the topic. Yet here it is again, with demagoguing politicians and “news” outlets using the fentanyl crisis to scare the crap out of people by blaming brown folks for a crisis entirely of our own making.

News flash – WE Americans are consuming fentanyl…if we weren’t, there would be no crisis, no awful death toll, no broken families and destroyed communities.

And we Americans are the ones importing fentanyl.

From a Former Border Patrol sector chief:

Virtually none is smuggled by migrants themselves, says Victor Manjarrez, Jr., a former Border Patrol sector chief who’s now a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

“The probability that they’re going to carry some kind of illicit narcotic is probably close to zero,” Manjarrez said. “The vast majority of that fentanyl is going through a port of entry.” [emphasis added]

This is clearly a fact-free campaign to demonize immigrants, to scare us into voting for politicians that talk about building walls and banning immigration.

What does this have to do with healthcare?

I’m sooooo glad you asked.

As a nation – and individuals – we are getting older fast. Older = more need for healthcare = need for more healthcare workers.

Where are those workers going to come from? Are your kids signing up to be home health aides? Your neighbors’ kids?

Doubtful.

There is a crisis  – but is sure as hell isn’t immigrants bringing in fentanyl.

No, the crisis is in healthcare staffing, so blocking immigration is worsening the crisis.

By far the most projected job openings is in direct healthcare workers in the decade ending in 2026 – 2 1/2 years from now – we’ll need 1.4 million direct health care workers – plus over 400,000 nurses.

States most affected by the healthcare worker crisis include Texas, Florida, Nebraska, Alabama, Wyoming and Maine.

Where are those workers going to come from – especially home health care workers? Today, almost four out of ten home heath aides are immigrants; that HAS to increase if we are going to have enough workers to care for us and our parents and grandparents.

Meanwhile Canada is attracting immigrants by giving health care workers a path to citizenship.

What does this mean for you?

If you want to change your own bed pan, vote to block immigration. 

PS…I dumped Twitter and moved to threads – follow me there at joe_paduda


Aug
18

Long COVID is real, “social inflation” is not.

Didn’t post this week…was in Chicago for the annual father-son trip to watch the Sox play the Cubs…very fun time!

While I was relaxing in the stands, shockingly the world continued turning…

WCRI’s report on long COVID’s impact on work comp was release, examining claims with an average of 18 months post-infection…my takeaways  include:

  • one out of 19 COVID claims developed long COVID
  • medical costs average less than $30k
  • temporary disability benefits run a bit above 20 weeks
  • Long COVID’s impact on workers’ comp is pretty minimal

Risk and Insurance weighed in on “social inflation”, a not-well-defined term insurance folks use to characterize their not-very-well-founded belief that society is driving up casualty claim costs.  VERY briefly, insurance execs complain that high jury awards to claimants are driving up insurance costs…however there’s precious little real research supporting that view. 

This from Ken Klein’s presentation to NAIC in 2022…

What does this mean for you?

Stop catastrophizing until you can prove something exists.

Start catastrophizing when the data is convincing. 

 

 


Aug
14

1 +1 = 3

Two mostly-ignored things will have way more impact on workers’ comp than any other ten factors.

And as usual, workers’ comp is out to lunch.

Let’s quickly review the work comp industry’s failure to understand reality.  When COVID hit, the workers’ comp industry’s caterwauling and catastrophizing hit epic levels… mostly driven by

That led to far too much angst and far too little reality-based planning by the workers’ comp industry.

Fast forward to today, where the opposite is happening.

The industry is blithely ignoring the impact;

  • heat will have on claims, loss ratios, combined ratios, and claim duration, and
  • infrastructure investment will have on premiums and claims.

Heat

The massive and seemingly endless heatwave in multiple states is affecting restaurant workers, agricultural workers, folks in logistics and manufacturing.

Sure there’s heat exhaustion and heat stroke and heat prostration (which costs about $38k per claim…)

But that’s the (forgive the analogy) tip of the iceberg…Excessive heat also creates more injuries of all types…injuries to cherry harvesters in Washington State increase 1.5% for every 1 degree C above 25 C (77 degrees F) – mostly from falling off ladders.

Oh, and California data shows: compared to days with temps in the 60s,

      • on days when the temperature was between 85 – 90 degrees Fahrenheit…the overall risk of ALL types of workplace injuries was 5 to 7 percent higher.
      • when temps topped 100 degrees, the overall risk of injuries was 10 to 15 percent greater.

This means more claims in an industry that is generally unprepared to “manage” heat-related claims.

Jobs

Hundreds of billions of dollars is flowing into infrastructure, investment that has already created ninety thousand jobs in:

  • construction,
  • transportation improvements,
  • highway, bridge and road maintenance and replacement, and
  • heavy industry.

And many more jobs are on the way. (check out where this is happening here).

These are very well-paid, high-frequency and high-severity jobs.

This means premiums will increase as will claims and claims costs. And this will continue for years.

What this means for you.

At risk of belaboring the obvious, a more dangerous environment for many more workers  in already high-risk jobs. 

Heat + Jobs = more premium dollars, higher costs for self-insureds, more claims, and higher severity claims.

 

 


Aug
10

We are all Hawaiians

The disaster in Maui is one of the most awful things I’ve ever seen. An entire town of 12,000 is gone, burned to the ground by a horrific firestorm.

At last 36 are dead, while countless others survived only because they jumped into the ocean to avoid being burned to death.

Here’s how we should think about this.

Of all the places in the US, no one ever thought Maui, a tourist paradise, would ever be in the news for a devastating wildfire. If it can happen in Maui, it can happen in Ohio, or New Jersey, or your home town.

Think it can’t?

So did residents of Lahaina.

What does this mean for you?

Prepare. Now. Not tomorrow, not next week, not as a 2024 goal.  Now.

Here’s a detailed discussion along with a list of what to do.

note – I am on Threads – joe_paduda


Aug
7

Physician dispensing in work comp is roaring back

mostly because insurers and employers have a been asleep at the switch.

Republishing a post with minor edits from two years ago…LOTS more on the sleazy business of physician dispensing here

WCRI’s latest report finds:

  • Physician-dispensed drugs (PDDs) accounted for more than half of drug costs per claim in Q1 2020 in four states – Florida, Georgia, Illinois, and Maryland.
  • In 12 states, doc-dispensed dermatological agents accounted for most payments for this drug class.
  • Louisiana is worst-off, with employers paying $190 per claim for dermo drugs in the 1st quarter of 2020…Illinois is right behind at $181.
  • Kansas and Connecticut saw payments for those dermo drugs triple from Q1 2017 to Q1 2020.

That profit-sucking prescribing by docs in Connecticut is why total drug spend increased 30% in the Nutmeg State – making it one of two states that had drug spend increases. Florida – the home state of PDD – was the other. (Across all subject states, drug costs dropped 41%.)

Having lived in CT for over 20 years, I’m really stumped by the precipitous increase in skin care drugs.

What could POSSIBLY be driving this massive need for occupationally-driven skin care/topicals?

  • Did sun spots create a pandemic of skin cancer but somehow only affect the second-smallest state?
  • Did a massive refinery accident expose tens of thousands of workers to burns or skin infections?
  • Did a hyper-virulent new breed of poison ivy run rampant, affecting thousands of landscaping and municipal workers?
  • Did the emerging cannabis industry fail to protect its workers from fertilizer burns, exposing thousands of workers to painful blisters?
  • Did everyone in Connecticut suddenly become unable to swallow a pill?

Of course not.

The real question is this:

why haven’t insurers, TPAs, and self-insured employers used CT’s Medical Care Plan to ban physician dispensing? Payers including the Workers’ Comp Trust of CT have pretty much eliminated physician dispensing.

It’s not just Connecticut.  PDD costs are outrageous, and all credible research indicates PDD is totally unnecessary, increases medical costs, and prolongs disability.

WCRI’s research should be a call to action.  Legislators, regulators, and payers are doing their policyholders and clients a disservice by failing to aggressively attack physician dispensing.

And those clients and policyholders are equally at fault – it is up to you to work with your PBM and payer to stop this rampant profiteering. 

What does this mean for you?

Yeah, I know it’s hard.

Stop whining and get serious.