NYT feature on the failures of New York's workers' compensation system

Read the story, "A World of Hurt: For Injured Workers, a Costly Legal Swamp," by N.R. Kleinfield and Steven Greenhouse. Here is an excerpt:

They come to the board seeking authorization for medical treatment and replacement wages — in short, a quick and fair resolution from a system set up to replace fractious court fights between employers and employees.

What they find instead is a subbasement of the legal world, a $5.5 billion-a-year state-run bureaucracy that, an examination by The New York Times found, struggles to treat workers with due speed, protect employers from fraud or mute tensions in the workplace.

These struggles are particularly evident each day in Queens, the state’s busiest hearing office, where The Times spent 18 months attending hearings, reviewing cases and interviewing participants, virtually none of whom defended the system as efficient.