State legislatures, regulatory agencies and rate makers have been busy lately enacting, tweaking, and doing away with various workers' compensation laws, rules and rates. A sampling of what has been happening across the country recently:

Florida: The National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) filed for a 4.2% rate decrease of Florida's workers' compensation rates on May 7. After approval by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, this decrease — the eighth since 2003 — brings the cumulative overall statewide average decrease in Florida's workers' compensation rates to 64.7 percent since massive reforms were enacted in 2003. The filing called for an effective date of July 1 on new and renewal policies.

In making the filing, NCCI cited the reduction in assessments on carriers and self-insurers from Florida's Special Disability Trust Fund (SDTF) from 4.52% to 1.46%. The Legislature established the SDTF in 1955 to encourage the employment of workers with pre-existing conditions; the SDTF was modified in 1997 to eliminate the eligibility for accidents that occurred after Jan. 1, 1998. This is the first decrease in the SDTF assessment since 1994.