While the state Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) dismisses the proposed 2017 workers’ compensation rate hike of 0.7% as just a “small increase,” (glossing over the fact it is actually 3.1% more than the system needs), Oregon has announced workers’ compensation rates there will decrease an average of 6.6% next year.

This is the fourth year in a row Oregon has decreased rates (the 2016 rate decreased 5.3%, dropped 5.3% in 2015 and 7.6% in 2014).  Even more impressive, workers’ comp rates in Oregon have decreased or stayed the same in 24 of the 26 years since the Oregon workers' comp reforms of 1990. Primary amongst those reforms was ending the state’s monopoly to allow competition from private insurers.  Oregon estimates employers in that state have saved more than $20 billion as a result of those reforms.

Idaho has similarly announced a rate decrease for 2017 of 1.2%.  Rates in the Gem State did increase slightly in 2016 by 0.2%, but overall employers in Idaho have benefitted from low rate increases.  In 2015 that state’s average workers’ comp rate decreased 0.2%, on top of a 0.9% decrease in 2014.  Between 2000-2016, average worker’s compensation rates in Idaho have increased a total of just 5.9%.

In fact, Washington is just one of a handful of states with a proposed increase in workers’ compensation rates.  Of the 37 states whose rates are recommended by the rating and filing bureau known as the National Council of Compensation Insurance (NCCI), just eight are increasing workers' compensation rates next year.  West Virgina, which ended its state-run monopoly workers' comp system in 2006 and now allows competition from private insurers, will drop rates by 14.7% in 2017.  This is the state's 12th reduction in workers’ compensation rates in 12 years.  West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin says employers in his state have saved more than $352 million since the program was privatized in 2006.

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION RATE CHANGES 2000-2016