With all the problems and injustices in the world, it can be difficult to know exactly where you should pick your battles. This is especially true for your professional world, because you may not get much leeway if you choose the wrong issues to focus on. However, when one group of people shows their passion through both talk and action, it can be one of the most powerful forces on the planet. That’s what the Florida Workers’ Compensation Strategic Task Force is hoping to do: effect change through systematic effort to help save businesses on potentially unnecessary costs of workers comp.
After town halls across Florida, the group said there needed to be more effort devoted to creating initiatives to improve the system. The call to action was brought upon due to the recent rulings in the state Supreme Court. One of those rulings denied a law that would place an expiration date on payments at more than two years after the worker was injured, and another denied the limitation of attorney fees for workers compensation. These two measures were meant to strip down some of the incentives that has made employee, legal and medical fraud as prevalent as it has been while creating a more sustainable plan for businesses who are trying to balance their expenses.
With another hearing coming up this month, insurance companies want to increase the rates for workers comp at close to 20%, a change that would take place on October 1. The looming court data spurred people into action to see if they couldn’t get together to come up with other ways to curb the amount they’re paying from month to month. Their platform is that businesses saddled with workers comp costs cannot grow, which cuts jobs for the people of the community. Without a stable means to support the community, it spells trouble for the economy at large. Their goal is to continue to come up with ideas until the best solutions are implemented to give Floridians a fairer outcome for both employees and company owners alike. This is about continued talks, not necessarily a one-off committee.
Whether you agree with the methods of the task force or not, this is a powerful lesson for those who do not agree with your own court rulings. It is always an option to increase your involvement in order to bring to light some of the more immediate potential dangers of paying too much for workers comp. Whether you’ve even been involved with an injured employee or not, precedents set in cases in your state can have a bigger influence on your bottom line than you think.
