As the cost of workers compensation
insurance reaches
crisis proportions, attention
in some states has turned to
reducing fraud. With an estimated
60 to 70 million
claims now pending, insurers
and state enforcement officials
say that many of the
12 million new claims filed
each year are fraudulent.
Fraudulent or exaggerated
claims add billions of dollars
a year to the nation's comp
insurance bill, according to
Arnold Schlossberg, Jr., president
of the National
Insurance Crime Bureau
(NICB), a group supported
by around 1,000 insurance
companies. In some states,
Schlossberg reports, fraud is
a factor in more than 20% of
the claims.
Only 15 states currently
have fraud bureaus within
their insurance departments.
But a handful of states are
taking serious steps to attack
the fraud problem, and some
are looking