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For anyone who doesn't know comp, the State Fund is the socialist state insurance company. They are atrocious to deal with and incredibly stoopid and incompetent.

AMEN- A client I have now (bookkeeping) has a running battle with them at the moment. A substitute bookkeeper who filled in for me when I was out of the state for 9 weeks paid the W/C bill at the wrong classification, and hence overpaid by about $525.00. I have spent 2 years trying to get the money back for my client. No luck so far. I plan on deducting it from the next payment.

ALSO- another friend got an increase in his office staff
W/C rates. The increase amounted to about 420 %. That is NOT a typo. Similar increases have occurred state wide.
Now Garamendi is announcing that he will give a 14.9% decrease?
Do the math: Increase of 420%, decrease of 14.9%. Still puts a small business in danger of going out of business.

I have watched W/C problems build in this state for 39 years. In the past, insurers wouldn't check into the fraud they were paying for. They said it would cost them too much to pay for the court cases involved. They also intimated that it would look bad for them to be picking on persons who were injured working.

I know of at least 2 cases where the persons who collected benefits WERE NOT injured on the job. One business owner screamed for assistance from his insurer's claims department, and they wouldn't even take his calls after awhile. HIs employee was fine at the job site on Fri afternoon. Employee went water skiing for 3 day weekend. Came in Tuesday and claimed work-related injury to his back. No matter what the boss did in trying to talk to insurer, he couldn't get them to listen to them.

Current business owners are reaping the rewards of this behavior on the part of the insurers.

The story says over 200 insurers are writing coverage in Calif, but I don't think that is correct. Companies are dropping insurance coverage for W/C left and right.

A lady that rides with me has just had the W/C double+ at her job. She is the only employee- clerical- nothing at all has changed at the job location or duties in over 5 years. Never any claims. The insurer wouldn't even try to give her a decent answer. They shopped the policy, and found that no one wanted to cover her. One employee- works in an office setting- at a private home/residence. Piracy, IMO.

I wonder if Davis raided the bank accounts of the state W/C fund like he did so many others? Hope Arnold's auditor finds some of this perversion.

"I plan on deducting it from the next payment."

Nice idea, but they'll cancel the policy right out from under you. If you have a record of what you were trying to collect you could take them to small claims court. It would waste your time, but you could get your money back.

The story says over 200 insurers are writing coverage in Calif, but I don't think that is correct.

This includes the big multinationals that will insure Fortune 500 co.'s CA locations. Small businesses probably have access to no more than two dozen insurers.

Crooks at the helm of our wildly careening ship of state.