Californians Gobble 22% of Nation's Benefits

Californians accounted for only 11.7% of employees covered by workers' compensation programs in 2004, but took away 22.3% of the benefits, according to a bulletin released by the California Workers' Compensation Institute on Thursday. The CWC extracted data from a July report by the National Academy of Social Insurance to compare California expenses to other states. The data is a bit dated, because the California Legislature passed major reform bills in 2003 and 2004 that had not yet taken effect in 2004, the latest year from which the academy had data available. Still, the CWCI report ...