Keystone State Blues

There have been a couple of nasty news stories recently that focus on problems on SWIF-the Pennsylvania State Workman's Insurance Fund.  SWIF is a state fund for Workers Compensation that competes with private insurers.  Just in the past sixty days, a supervisor at SWIF was charged with fraudulently lowering Workers Comp premiums for employers, in return for significant kickbacks.  The supervisor, James McDonnell, allegedly ran his scheme for more than a decade, from 1999 to 2011.  According to news reports, McDonnell was also accused of sexually harassing another SWIF worker.  According to these news stories, SWIF failed to take those charges seriously at the time.

The other news story is that SWIF overpaid in the millions for an outsourced claims software program.  So it would appear that the Pennsylvania agency has been performing in a manner consistent with a lot of folks' worst stereotypes of a bloated government  bureaucracy.