Work comp and auto payers in many southeastern states have seen a sharp rise in facility costs over the last five years.

While ineffective fee schedules are partially to blame, the real driver may well be politicians’ refusal to expand Medicaid.

When Medicaid expansion was offered in 2014 as part of the ACA, most states took advantage of the option, resulting in a massive decline in uncompensated care. However, the ACA also reduced federal payments to hospitals in tough financial shape, the rationale being Medicaid’s expansion would reduce the need for additional funding.

Not surprisingly, the cost of uncompensated care dropped dramatically in states that expanded Medicaid.

Equally unsurprising was the increase in the cost of uncompensated care for those states that didn’t expand Medicaid.

In the chart below, the gold bubbles in the top right show how much the uninsured rate increased, correlated with uncompensated care’s share of hospital costs.

So, we have a massive revenue shortfall in non-expansion states; Florida, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and others, setting up pretty dire financial situation for hospitals.

What does this have to do with workers’ comp, you ask?

This.

The chart – courtesy WCRI – shows a remarkable correlation between non-Medicaid expansion and higher prices paid for workers’ comp.

The reason is simple. Hospitals, especially those in southeastern states, rural and small ones, are desperate for revenue, and workers’ comp is a very soft target.

What does this mean for you?

If you think you’ve got the right answer for facility costs, you’re probably wrong.

What the heck is going on in the Golden State?

For the second year in a row, claim frequency for self-insured employers is up (frequency is the percentage of FTEs that file a work comp claim). Over the two years the total increase in frequency was 12.4% while actual claim counts rose 10.8%.

Meanwhile, over that same period, work comp premiums declined…(also from CWCI); driven mostly by a drop in premiums charged for covered payroll (so this wasn’t due to fewer employees covered by work comp).

What is going on here?

For self-insured employers, it’s not more workers; the number of FTEs marginally increased – and frequency accounts for employee count variation. But, those workers are suffering injuries/illnesses slightly more often.

Insurers’ premiums are driven by payroll, past and projected future claim counts and costs – but also by insurers’ business priorities. With work comp insurance profits remaining high, it is indeed possible that underwriters are ignoring warning signs in their pursuit of market share and more premium dollars.

This has happened before – and it always ends badly.

It’s also theoretically possible the “LA Basin Effect” (cumulative trauma claims inspired by unscrupulous doctors and lawyers in the Los Angeles area) is having a disproportionate effect on self-insured employers. I kind of doubt it, as large employers are more attuned to this type of mischief than smaller, insured employers.

There’s another possible factor affecting premiums that I’m pursuing; too early to dig into it but suffice it to say that it might well offset the premium impact of any frequency increase.

What does this mean for you?

“I am on the verge of mysteries, and…the veil which covers them is getting thinner and thinner.” Louis Pasteur

Flooding and wildfires are causing increased rates of cancer, asthma, and other respiratory ailments among the people exposed. These events are getting larger and more frequent, a reality that will affect the work comp industry.

Notably, we understand a lot more about the long-term health effects of disasters due to tracking the health status of individuals affected by the attack on the World Trade Center. Data indicates higher rates of thyroid and prostate cancer as well as pulmonary fibrosis among those studied.

A well-researched article in the NYTimes this morning shows this is a much bigger issue, citing:

• raised levels of carcinogenic PCBs from flooding in Puerto Rico,
• significantly higher rates of asthma from Californians exposed to smoke from wildfires, and
• sinus problems, skin irritation and respiratory ailments reported by individuals after hurricane Harvey flooded industrial areas around Houston.

Harvey is particularly scary. Research showed benzene, lye, vinyl chloride, butadiene, and dioxin were just a few of the 200+ chemicals and contaminants spread across thousands of acres of residential neighborhoods, parks, playgrounds, schools, and business district by floodwaters.

While the long-term effects are far from certain, what we do know that clean-up crews and construction workers likely face significant exposure risks. I wrote about this a couple years ago; given the growing intensity and frequency of “weather events” driven by climate change, we can expect more in coming years.

What does this mean for you?

Occupational illness/disease claims may well increase significantly over the next few years, an eventuality that most employers, insurers, and actuaries have likely not considered.

Too darn busy last week to get my usual 3-5 posts up…things are calming down this week so expect to see posts in your inbox.

Followup on One Call; after the Debtwire article about OCCM debtholders organizing to prepare for a “potential liquidity event and expected covenant violation…” I was inundated with nonsense from anonymous writers accusing me of bias…this continued last week. [reminder – I reserve the right to know who is commenting]

A couple people told me OCCM owner Apax had offered $50 million to OCCM management, who turned it down.

Sorry, that’s just not credible; let’s walk thru the logic here.

• Private equity firms such as Apax don’t have a pot of money to write checks from. All Apax’ funds are from investors, and Apax has to get investors’ approval before using any of their funds.
• To do this, A) Apax would have to restructure the entire transaction, giving stock to B) investors who think sending money to a company that will likely be owned by creditors is a great idea.
• There’s no way OCCM management would “turn down” a cash infusion. As Debtwire reported, “cash flow has been limited by high capex needs as a result of its effort to migrate users under a single system” (Debtwire is referring to Polaris’ development cost).
• OCCM has a line of credit-type load that, according to Debtwire,

  “had USD 50m drawn at 31 March” out of a total available amount of $56.6 million….so, One Call had only $6.6 million available AND was paying interest on the $50 million it had already borrowed.

  Ergo, if management HAD been offered $50 million in cash, they would’ve been delighted to accept it. For the reasons enumerated above, I very much doubt that offer was made.  If you know otherwise, I’m all ears.

To my critics, reporting facts isn’t “biased”, Debtwire isn’t biased, and neither are financial statements. For non-believers, One Call has to report its second quarter results within 45 days of the end of the quarter. That’s a month from today.

It is possible, if not probable, that the debt investors will see the numbers before mid-August. If the numbers are consistent with Debtwire’s reporting, there may well be a “covenant violation.”

Update – One Call CEO Rone Baldwin provided a financial update this morning; he states:

One Call is in full compliance with all debt covenants for the second quarter of 2019 and expects to be compliant for the remainder of 2019, based on the full-year guidance that it intends to provide to investors in its second quarter conference call.

Will keep you posted.

Want to know how medical prices affect worker outcomes? Then WCRI’s upcoming webinar featuring Bogdan Savych PhD is a must.

Worker mis-classification – the usually-intentional is coming under increasing scrutiny, with the latest moves coming from the Garden State. Gov. Phil Murphy released a report which, according to Business Insurance, indicated “employee misclassification, which has grown 40% over the past decade…in 2018 alone 12,315 workers in New Jersey were misclassified as independent contractors.”

Finally, I heard from several folks about my York-Sedgwick post suggesting that my statement “a highly profitable managed care unit built by former leader Doug Markham” was inaccurate.

Fair point.

In my haste I failed to give credit to the many other people who built that business. Markham led Wellcomp prior to – and after – York’s acquisition of MCMC. The businesses were run separately for a time, then “combined” in a move that resulted in Markham running the new entity entitled CareWorks.

Mike Lindberg and his colleagues at MCMC – acquired by York – built a thriving managed care business that served, and continues to serve, a big list of customers. MCMC was kinda/sorta “combined” with York’s internal managed care entity under Markham when Mike Lindberg departed; I won’t get into the drama that surrounded that move. MCMC was a big chunk, if not the larger piece, of York’s managed care entity.

BJ Dougherty, Lisa Oskoui, Larry Brinton, Steve Junker are some of the professionals whose contributions made MCMC a successful company. (apologies in advance to those folks I failed to name)