A Realistic Plan for Determining Compensations Insurance Rate Levels [Discussion]

This paper and that on "Rate Levels for Workmen's Compensation Premiums" by Mr. Perryman (page 45), contradictory and antagonistic as they are in certain respects, are in agreement in advancing a new and fundamentally different concept of the workmen's compensation rate. It does not seem to the writer that as Mr. Senior says, it is merely a more realistic approach to the same problem. It is rather an approach to a different problem of which the solution may be easier and more readily explained. But the theoretical justification of this shift in the problem and its solution implies an even more important shift in the concept of the place and function of the insurance carrier. Furthermore the adoption of this concept would seem to call for radical changes in the present manner of conducting the compensation insurance business along lines suggested by Mr. Greene in his paper (Vol. XIX, p. 230) but going much further.