My blog post of last Thursday (19 November 2009) addressing why workers’ compensation costs in Massachusetts are the lowest in the nation, while benefits are among the highest drew a mild pushback from Mark Walls, who manages the excellent LinkedIn Workers’ Compensation Forum. Mark wrote:
“Working for an excess carrier, I would never have expected Massachusetts to be considered a “low cost” state. In Massachusetts you cannot settle medical, and there are COLA’s on the lifetime benefits. In my world, it’s a high cost state.
I guess it’s all about your perspective.”
And he’s right- it is all about perspective. Mark also wrote, “I’m a claims guy,” and the blog post in question was all about premium rates. Sometimes, what appears logical when looking at claims can appear illogical when viewed through the prism of premium rates.
I can certainly understand why claims professionals in Massachusetts might be a bit frustrated, because not being able to settle the medical portion of a claim, along with having to contend with annual Cost of Living Adjustments, tends to obliterate predictability.
The perspective Mark mentions changes, however, when one considers a workers’ compensation program unique to the Massachusetts voluntary market, a program that substantially increases premium collected in the state while not driving up premium rates: the All Risk Adjustment Program, or, as it’s better known, the ARAP Surcharge.
In all 38 NCCI states, the ARAP, a sort of second experience modification that penalizes severity more than frequency, exists as the Assigned Risk Adjustment Program and is found in the Residual, but not in the Voluntary, market. This is supposed to provide even more of an incentive for employers in the Pool to do the right things to get themselves into the voluntary market. It’s a debit mod only. In Massachusetts, however, the ARAP can be found in both the Residual and Voluntary markets. If an employer in the Voluntary market has a high experience modification, it will also most likely find itself with an ARAP surcharge, anywhere from 1% to 25%, which is applied to the standard modified premium.
For example, say a company in the Voluntary market has a manual premium of $100,000, an experience modification of 1.5 and an ARAP of 1.2. The resultant total premium will be $180,000. Think of the $30,000 ARAP charge as compound interest. This means that Massachusetts premiums are more sensitive to losses than premiums in other states, even “loss cost” states.
And why shouldn’t an employer with high claim severity pay more for workers’ compensation? Why should employers with low claim severity subsidize those with high claim severity? Although many in industry abhor the idea of the Voluntary market ARAP, it seems to me that Massachusetts is doing the fair and reasonable thing.
In 2007, ARAP surcharges in Massachusetts brought in additional premium of $60 million, or about 7% of total premium in the state. However, this should decline fairly significantly in 2008 and going forward for two reasons:
• First, until 2008, the maximum ARAP surcharge was 49%; in 2008, the maximum was lowered to 25%;
• Second, Massachusetts has been hard hit by the recession, causing payrolls to decrease substantially; lower payrolls result in lower premiums.
The Massachusetts Workers’ Compensation Rating and Inspection Bureau is now engaged in the monumental task of putting together a rate filing to be submitted in 2010. It will be interesting, indeed, to see to what extent lowering the maximum ARAP surcharge from 49% to 25% impacts the filing.
Tags: Massachusetts, metrics, rates
