Had a great few days of vacation last week; completely ignored work, spent a lot of time with many old friends, and learned for the millionth time how unbelievably lucky I am to be married to Deb.
Here’s a VERY brief summary of some of the happenings that happened while I was doing everything possible to ignore them.
Workers’ Comp
NO acquisitions were announced. Maybe it’s because August is a big vacation month – not that the investment world ever takes vacations – but no deals were announced, or even rumored to be done last week. Word is APAX/OneCall is still the front runner for Coventry Work Comp, more accurately that’s the consensus of the rumor mill. There are a couple other interested parties, but for now IF a deal gets done it will likely be finalized in October.
The big Florida Work Comp conference is happening this week and it’s likely to be bigger than ever. Your trusty author isn’t there, but Bob Wilson, Mark Walls, Roberto Ceniceros and the other real experts will be keeping us posted on the goings-on. There’s also WCI-FWCI TV; the conference broadcasts selected sessions and does an update each day on happenings.
In what will likely be the top topic on everyone’s mind, a Florida judge ruled that the state’s work comp law is unconstitutional; the Miami Herald reported ““The benefits in the act have been so decimated,” [Judge Jorge] Cueto wrote, “that it no longer provides a reasonable alternative” to filing suit in civil court.”
More details here from the Herald.
Health reform roll-out
The latest PPACA Chicken Little story is that Exchange enrollment is falling off dramatically as newly-insureds drop out. According to the Investor’s Business Daily, the attrition rate is around 30 percent…
Except that’s completely wrong.
IBD’s piece distorted the figures by using the initial enrollment data as a baseline – NOT the initial PAID enrollment figure. A chunk of those who originally signed up didn’t pay, so they never had coverage to begin with. Comparing the total number of those who signed up (regardless of whether they paid or not) to those who stopped paying is apples to oranges – unless IBD’s intention was to mislead.
In fact, the decline in paid enrollment pretty much parallels what health plans normally see in an individual health block – a couple percent a month. That’s due to enrollees getting jobs, going on to Medicare, getting married, dying, losing their jobs – normal life events.
IBD – and their fellow ideologues – either don’t understand the basics of the health insurance business, or choose to ignore facts and figures that don’t fit with their ideology. Either way, it makes one wonder how credible the rest of their reporting and opining is.
Methinks “IBD” stands for “Ideologues Being Deceitful”…
