Starbucks Union

Joe Cassano is not apologizing to anyone. The former AIG executive who helped bring the world economy tumbling down says he did nothing wrong. His underwriting standards never changed: he never saw any risk in underwriting those collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). And if AIG leadership had had the cojones to keep him on board after the proverbial waste matter hit...

A fresh new Cavalcade of Risk is awaiting your perusal at Wenchy's place - check it out!...

Five years ago almost to the day we blogged the saga of Dr. Jayant Patel, a surgeon of staggering incompetence who wreaked havoc on the citizens of Bundaberg, Australia. After 14 weeks of testimony, more than 75 witnesses and nearly 50 hours of deliberations over six days, a jury convicted Patel of manslaughter in the deaths of four patients and...

Lawyers, investigators, policymakers and safety professionals will be wrangling over the Deepwater Horizon tragedy for years to determine what happened, where fault lay, and who will pay. By many accounts, Deepwater Horizon was had a relatively good safety record. Its 125-member crew had no serious injuries in the seven years prior to the explosion. In a cruel irony, BP mangers...

Brad Wright of Wright on Health has an excellent edition of Health Wonk Review, which shines a spotlight on research. Brad notes that, going forward, research will be incredibly important as health reform is implemented and evaluated. He offers a fine research roundup from leading healthcare bloggers - check it out! Healthcare - According to a Commonwealth Fund report on...

We return to the beautiful state of Maine, where moose wander the woods looking for whatever interests a moose and where employers self-insured for workers comp look for a fee schedule. The moose are a lot happier than the self-insureds. As we have pointed out in prior blogs, the legislature mandated the creation of a fee schedule for medical services...

A sewer may not be the preferred place to begin the work week, but the working world calls and we must follow. About a year ago, we blogged the sad story of Shlomo and Harel Dahan, respectively the owner and heir of S. Dahan Piping and Heating company in Queens, New York. They were hired to vacuum an 18-foot-deep dry...

The saga of the New York self insurance trusts continues. We reported in April that justice had been served by Judge Kimberly O'Connell, who ruled that requiring solvent trusts to pay for the sins of insolvent trusts was unconstitutional. Now, according to Work Comp Central (subscription required), O'Connell herself has been overruled by a four judge panel, which has reinstated...

Two years ago, New York Governor Patterson convened a task force to examine the status of self-insured trusts for workers comp. He was forced to take action when a number of trusts failed, most notably those administered by Compensation Risk Managers (CRM). The insolvent trusts left behind a deficit of $500 million. (See our prior blogs here and here.) The...

Workers comp is 100 years old this year and by way of Roberto Ceniceros' informative blog Comp Time, we learn that there is a Workers' Compensation Centennial Commission (WCCC), which was formed to celebrate the anniversary of the first constitutional workers' compensation law in the United States. The WCCC was organized by a bi-partisan coalition of Wisconsin-based labor and...

For a biweekly risk roundup, check out this week's edition of Cavalcade of Risk over at My Wealth Builder....

There are five towns in Massachusetts that do not carry workers comp insurance for their employees. Four of them - Dana, Prescott, Enfield and Greenwich - are under 412 billion gallons of water: they were submerged during the 1930s in the making of the Quabbin Reservoir, which supplies drinking water to Boston and a number of suburban cities and towns....

In the the following guest post, Gary Anderberg, Phd, the Practice Leader For Outcomes and Analytics at Broadspire offers his thoughts on the potential impact of healthcare reform on workers comp in the coming years. At the moment, health care reform appears to have a number of positive and negative potential impacts on workers compensation over the next few years....

Our Boston neighbor Tinker Ready hosts this week's edition of Health Wonk Review at Boston Health News and it's a killer edition - check it out. Awkward - Making the web circuits, many have been posting about the Bollywood safety dance video by Transocean's CEO. We encourage CEOs and senior managers to ensure that safety is top company priority -...

We are following the consequences of the gulf oil disaster with increasing despair. Images of oil soaked birds, dead fish, and the serene Gulf waters transformed from the customary beautiful blue-green to an appalling brown. Our thoughts also turn to the men and women laboring under very challenging conditions to contain the impact of this man-made disaster. NIOSH has issued...

In the 1930s, when the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) passed, these two laws offered labor protections to workers nationwide - with the exception of two large segments of the work population: domestic workers and agricultural workers. These groups were excluded in the interests of political expediency since a large proportion of both...

As a service for Insider readers who do not follow the Flathead Beacon, we bring you the western Montana saga of Brock Hopkins, who either was or was not an employee of Great Bear Adventures when he had a great bear adventure of his own, much to his detriment. Hopkins, 23 at the time, appears to have been an occasional...

Welcome to the June 2, 2010 edition of Cavalcade of Risk. With this issue, we mark the fourth anniversary of our biweekly risk roundup. Kudos to Hank Stern, Cavalcade's founder, keeper of the flame, and all round good blog citizen. He's the perfect person to lead the charge - as an insurance expert, he knows quite a bit about...

With a population around 1.5 million and a land mass the size of New England, Idaho is probably not the first state that comes to mind in the national struggle to contain medical costs. Nonetheless, orthopedists in Idaho have managed to attract the attention of the federal government in their effort to increase rates of reimbursement for services. The feds...

Fresh Health Wonk Review - David Williams has posted a packed & pithy edition of Health Wonk Review over at his Health Business Blog - get your biweekly fill of the best of the health policy blogs. Social media - Peter Rousmaniere has a roundup of some of the best workers' comp social networking on the web at Risk and...