Nationwide, employers are seeing workers’ comp costs plummet, with organizations like the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) and independent rating bureaus recommending premium cuts.

The news is even better in Ohio, where employers might actually profit from their investment in workers’ comp coverage.

Instead of private insurers, Ohio’s Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) provides comp coverage and sets premium rates through in-house actuaries. When investment returns and premiums collected exceed claim costs, the BWC can issue dividend payments to policyholders, similarly to a mutual insurer.

Accordingly, Governor Mike DeWine just asked the BWC to return a cool billion dollars to employers.

This follows the most recent dividend payout of $5 billion in 2020. If the BWC approves the request, employers will have received more in dividends than they paid in premiums over DeWine’s tenure so far.

Meanwhile, in California, employers face a 6.6% premium rate increase, the second in a row following last year’s 8.7% increase. The California Department of Insurance (CDI) requested the increase following a recommendation from the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB) to raise rates even higher.

California Governor Gavin Newsom doesn’t have Mike DeWine’s power to push for lower premiums. He does, however, preside over the Department of Industrial Relations (CA DIR) and the Division of Workers’ Compensation (CA DWC). These entities, particularly the CA DWC, leave much to be desired in overseeing and managing the state’s chaotic comp system.

Maybe Ohio has the right idea in barring private insurers from the comp market. Or maybe California just lacks a governor’s leadership necessary to make any comp system function properly.

Ohio: Covering Workers Without Burdening Employers

At a scheduled meeting on August 28, 2026, the BWC will decide whether to grant DeWine’s request for a billion-dollar dividend payment to the state’s roughly 245,000 employers.

If it does, the move would bring total dividend payouts since DeWine took office in 2019 to $10.2 billion, more than the average employer has paid in premiums over that period.

Meanwhile, premium rates remain on the downslide, with successive cuts to rates for private and public employers almost every year since 2011. In other words, Ohio employers keep paying less and keep getting more.

California: An Infuriating Outlier

It’s expensive enough to do business in California without paying one of the nation’s highest comp premiums. But that’s exactly what California employers are doing, largely thanks to the WCIRB, which insists that market conditions warrant higher rates.

As daisyNews has explored, the WCIRB’s justifications for rate hike requests leave much to be questioned, especially coming from an entity credibly accused of “skewing” the data to the benefit of its insurer members, who control the organization’s Governing and Actuarial Committees.

With comp outperforming most other lines of insurance in profitability, provider reimbursement rates on the low end (lower still considering discount contracting), and healthy loss ratios even for non-profit California insurers, we have yet to hear a convincing reason for insurers to keep reaching into employers’ coffers.

…and no, Cumulative Trauma claims alone can’t explain it.  

There are obvious differences between California, one of the world’s largest economies, and other states like Ohio. However, neither the WCIRB nor anyone else has sufficiently defended the exorbitant rates California employers pay that have increased dramatically over the last two years.

Most disturbingly, truly independent studies of the system are impossible, as the CA DWC seemingly refuses to collect comprehensive statewide claim-level data, in open violation of state law.

Governor Newsom has taken no steps, to our knowledge, to compel the agencies he governs to follow the law. Worse, those agencies have shown little interest in compelling payers to follow the law. Providers, injured workers, and employers are effectively on their own, as claims take twice as long to resolve and cost twice as much to deliver care and benefits compared with the national medians.

Other states are doing it much, much better. When will California employers demand a functioning comp system that they are paying for?

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