One generation's world is not another's.

Consider Wallace Atwood. A leading geographer of his time (the 1920s and 30s) , President of Clark University, and designer of a series of popular pull down maps many of us remember in school.

I picked up an Atwood pull-down map of Asia at a local curio store.

Atwood's world was different. Japan controlled Korea and Taiwan. There was French Indo-China rather than Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia. TransJordan &Palestine instead of today's Middle East.. Baluchistan, but no Pakistan, no Bangladesh. A USSR and a Yugoslavia that collapsed.

Makes the USA look pretty stable. Yes, Oklahoma may be asserting it's "soveriegnty":
http://newsok.com/house-bypasses-govern ... le/3366762

Yes, California's finances may be heading off the cliff:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... ss.bayarea

But we're still here. No State of Jefferson yet.

A glance at one of these old maps quickly shows the sweep of history and highlights the kinds of challenges we face.

Uncertainty is always just around the corner.

Here in our workers' comp world, there's wide anticipation about the coming week. We'll have a dose of certainty in the comp world.

The California Supreme Court gave notice Friday of a
"forthcoming opinion":
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/SF51109A.PDF

We'll know very soon what the result is in the Smith and Amar cases.

At stake is how (or whether) attorneys shall be paid for fighting treatment denials where there is an award for medical treatment. The result in this case could determine whether injured workers are able to maintain (or secure) representation to fight treatment denials.

Many experienced California workers' comp attorneys handle a huge volume of treatment denial issues, often on cases of workers whose case-in-chief was resolved years or even decades ago. The applicant attorney may be deluged with calls about medication denials on an injury that occurred 20 years ago.

Providing those services costs time and money, requiring significant staffing.

Who is to pay for that?

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com
(got a comment, a tip, an idea? you can contact me at
jyoung@boxerlaw.com)

The last few years have been rough for SCIF, California's State Compensation Insurance Fund.

A quasi-public entity, SCIF is California's statutory insurer of last resort. Just a few years ago, it's market share had ballooned. Recently that market share has fallen by over half.

Governance problems and operational difficulties plagued SCIF in recent years. As a result, there were legislative oversight efforts, bad press and increased regulatory focus.

In 2007 the CDI reported a long list of concerns about SCIF's operations. At the time, I did a post entitled "Audit Of SCIF Shows Largest Comp Insurer Ran Amok":
http://workerscompzone.com/index.php?en ... 212-010631

Yesterday, the California Department of Insurance released a followup report on SCIF's operations, focusing on 2008.

The report shows progress at SCIF. Of 110 noted problems, 53 are said to have been solved and 40 "partially remediated". 17 areas of concern have not been addressed. You can read the report yourself by clicking here:
http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0250-insure ... Fund08.pdf

Included with the report is a table detailing each concern and the action or inaction on that point.

SCIF does have a new leadership team that will undoubtedly be addressing these other issues.

It's good to see SCIF under the microscope, addressing these issues. A healthy SCIF is important to the California workers' comp marketplace.

But it's clear that other carriers are not subjected to the same scrutiny.

Can you imagine AIG or ACE undergoing this level of scrutiny? Of course not. SCIF's peculiar role and structure put it on the hot seat in a way that other carriers haven't had to face.

The irony of it all is that-in my experience-SCIF has a comparatively stable and well-trained workforce. Compared to the revolving door, adjuster de jour staff of some TPAs and insurers, SCIF's cadre is often stellar.

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com (you can subscribe to the blog by clicking on the RSS reader on the lower right hand column under "Most Recent Entries")

In recent posts, I've covered some of the moves that gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner has made in the workers' comp arena.

But what of his nemesis for the GOP nomination, ex-EBay CEO Meg Whitman?

It's early in the campaign, but apparently the buzz among some political types is that Whitman may have a climb to get a grip on the specifics of California's issues. Here's a sample from Calbuzz, a site that tracks California politics:
http://calbuzzer.blogspot.com/2009/05/c ... arkey.html

Here's a question for my readers....who's schooling Whitman on workers' comp issues? Are there players in the comp industry that have lined up with Whitman's brain trust?

Just curious.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com (as always, you can contact me with your feedback
or comments to jyoung@boxerlaw.com)

Radio is dying. So they say. No one advertises on it anymore. And everyone's on their iPod.

But it makes a helluva companion for a comp lawyer making that road trip to one of the Central Valley boards....in my case, today, Stockton. It's where I covered my first WCAB case years ago.

Radio. Where else can you hear Teri Gross interviewing a Montana entymologist on his research on battles between dung beetles. Turns out that in your back yard there's likely a war going on between some male dung beetles trying to get into tunnels dug by the females.Dung beetles the size of pencil erasers, with large horns.

Lots of violence and sex going on right in your back yard. And you thought nature was a placid Buddhist-style paradise. How wrong.

Where else can you hear talk radio speculations about the Taliban rolling on into Islamabad, flipping that weak government and getting a nuclear arsenal? Not so far fetched as you might think:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/world ... amp;st=cse

Nothing on the radio about comp, though. It's an under the radar issue.

Of course, Steve Poizner is trying to give the issue exposure.

My trusty e mail box was filled with a Poizner e mail when I returned from Stockton. Here's a link to the Department of Insurance website, which contains links to pdf versions of the brief that Poizner recently filed in the Ogilvie and Almaraz/Guzman decisions:
http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0400-news/0 ... 057-09.cfm

I'll be posting the briefs of other stakeholders when I get my hands on them.

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com (you can contact me at jyoung@boxerlaw.com)

There's been a growing awareness that employer premium fraud is a major problem for California's workers' comp system.

Last week, out of Orange County, comes a primo example of the problem. Michael Petronella ran several roofing companies that vastly underreported payroll.

We're talking $29 million in actual payroll and $2.9 million in reported payroll, according to the Orange County Register's investigation.

The OC Register piece is worth reading as a textbook example of how some employers are fattening their pockets:
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/insu ... roll-kile#

The result is a system out of whack. System costs are skewed as honest employers subsidize dishonest ones.

Here's a link to a post I did called "It's the Employer Fraud, Stupid!-Part 1":
http://workerscompzone.com/index.php?en ... 501-214812

And a later post, "It's the Employer Fraud, Stupid!-Part 2":
http://workerscompzone.com/index.php?en ... 818-110358

Those posts contain links to the major employer fraud study done for CHSWC by UC Berkeley researchers Frank Neuhauser and Colleen Donovan. Though the studies are about 2 years old now, they are as relevant as the day they were written.

Stay tuned.

Julius Young
www.boxerlaw.com (have a gripe, an idea, a tip, feedback, gossip? you
can e mail me at jyoung@boxerlaw.com)