Local governments, including Genesee County, that participate in pooling a workers compensation insurance program have a chance to get help reducing workplace injuries using consultants for essentially no cost.
Bill Fritts, president of Lawley Genesee, explained what his company is prepared to do for local governments if Lawley becomes the worker compensation insurance broker.
The possibility came to Fritts's attention, he said, after receiving a request for proposal from the county for a new workers comp plan.
As a broker, Lawley can apply its commissions to provide a variety of services to members of the pool.
Genesee County, along with all of the local school districts and most towns and villages (but not the City of Batavia) are part of a self-insurance pool for workers compensation.
If a worker is injured on the job, the pool will pay the first $500,000 of coverage.
What the county has been shopping for is a new carrier for "excess coverage" -- an insurance company that pays any claims in excess of $500,000.
There are only three such carriers in the nation.
Under the plan presented by Fritts, Lawley will accept bids from the carriers, select one and manage the relationship.
With its commissions, Lawley will then use its own experts to identify areas where worker safety can be improved and look for other cost-saving opportunities.
Lawley's consultants will study claim history, look for departments that have safety records that can improve and then study work that's going on in those workplaces to see what safety improvements can be made.
"We'll look at what members are hurting and helping you," Fritt said. "We send in loss-prevention consultants to those areas first that hare hurting you and see what safety programs are needed. We might create incentive programs if they need to change their culture and help them change their culture."
There is no additional fee for the pool members for the extra services.
"I've seen the results and it's pretty amazing," Fritts said. "It makes you feel pretty good because you're preventing injuries."
At the next Ways and Means Committee meeting, legislators will have a chance to vote on the offer.
Why isn't Genesee County
Why isn't Genesee County "self insured"? Many operations such as the one I work for, RGRTA/BLine Bus, are self insured... I would think that Genesee Co should have the financial wherewithal to do so too.
Any time you can eliminate a middleman you save money.
LOOK, IT's FREE! IT's FREE!!
LOOK, IT's FREE! IT's FREE!! Who the HELL (sorry) is gonna believe that this isn't gonna cost SOMEBODY?? It'll either be the employer (be it a town, village or other), or, much, much more likely, the employees (that's the little guys like you and me (well, not ME per se, 'cause I moved the 'H' out of NY when I retired). But nothing is FREE! This sort of reminds me of a guy I worked with back in the mid-2000's. He was a good kid (kid? He was all of 35 or so, but a 'kid' to me). Born & raised in Tehran, Iran. At age 29, he became a 'Christian'. According to him, the Iranian gov't told him pretty much he was a dead man, so he left. He said he walked for 47 days (mostly at night time, to avoid detection), until he reached Athens, Greece. He said that's when he felt 'safe'. Anyways, when I worked with him, he kept having trouble getting viruses on his computer. After the 3rd virus in 2 months, we (jokingly) told him to stop going to all those porn websites. He swore, "No. No. I no go to any porn site". When he got the 4th virus, we asked him exactly what he did right before his computer crashed. He said, "I get message on my computer, it say Click Here for FREE laptop. So I click it. Then my computer not working anymore. Well, we had a heck of a time convincing him that NOTHING was FREE. That every time he sees FREE, DO NOT click on OK. I think we finally got it through to him. At least, I never heard about another virus. Anyways, nothing is FREE, people. Somebody, somewhere, is gonna have to pay. Something! That's just the way it is. Or, as I astonishingly heard my 3-year-old great-nephew say one day, "It is what it is!" See, even HE knows.
Brian, they are self insured,
Brian, they are self insured, as the story explains.