The Curious Case of Illinois

Mortality trends for public employee retirees in the years 2015 to 2024.

I’m a former public employee that did not want to put an experimental drug into my body just to keep my job. That experience has probably scarred me for life. I am now looking at public institutions, state by state, to see if there is any potential (official) evidence of harm caused by those coerced covid vaccinations.

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Even though I have officially completed my tour of the country looking at all fifty state’s retirement systems and their mortality data, there are many more pension sources out there to examine when one has the time. I have a ‘to do’ list in that regard and will be sharing some of those … now and then.

And of course, I will add them as they come out to the compendium list contained in my last post, Dead Reckoning.

Why am I now going back to Illinois?

Illinois was one of the few states that I previously characterized as “nothing to see here”. In that first look at the State Employee Retirement System, the members removed from the rolls only had a modest tick up for FY2021 and FY2022. Otherwise, there was not a lot of evidence of the pandemic event to be seen in the numbers. At the time of writing that report, I was relieved that some places seemed to have been spared the adverse effects of the pandemic.

Well, just by chance I happened upon a pension report recently for the municipal workers of Illinois, known as IMRF (Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund). The numbers contained in that document paint an altogether different picture of things in that state. The trajectory of members removed in this municipal report was more like we saw in the vast majority of reports elsewhere - the pandemic event is clearly seen in elevated numbers. There are also very noticeable rises in almost all of the other mortality indicators throughout the document … at least until the end of 2023. Which leads to the thing that really caught my eye - a precipitous drop in many statistics from 2023 to 2024. Now, a modest drop in a number, say deaths, would be a good thing to most people’s thinking. But a giant drop off a cliff requires one to really try and delve deeper for understanding.

Which brings me to something tangental, but hopefully relevant. In the comments section of my last Dead Reckoning post, a reader provided a link to another Substack, Coffee & Covid with Jeff Childers (from July 3rd) and asked if I had read it. I had not, but after looking at that post, I started to wonder if there was possibly a connection to what I was seeing in my Illinois municipal workers report. Here are the parts of Jeff Childers’ post that got my attention (emphasis mine):

“The managed care industry got carpet-bombed yesterday, after Centene Corporation, one of the largest health insurers in the U.S., suffered the worst single-day stock drop in its history—crashing up to 40% after yanking its 2025 guidance. The crash was caused by devastating new actuarial data showing that Centene’s Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) enrollees are sicker, costlier, and fewer than expected …

… But the company’s explanations made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. They cited two “unexpected” developments. First, morbidity (sickness and permanent disability) is rocketing upwards. Seon, at the same time, their insured pools are shriveling. The loss of enrollees is, presumably, because of excess death. Why else would very sick people drop off free or heavily subsidized insurance rolls? …

… The fact that Centene had to suddenly withdraw guidance —not revise, not adjust, but yank it entirely— and instead report a devastating $1.8 billion projected hole, based on new data from its auditors, suggests the trend was recent and sharp, not gradual …

… But even that unsettling news wasn’t what turned my blood to icy sludge. It was another dot that snapped right into place. On June 29th, I ran a different story, at that time describing a happy DOGE success story. The story was about the federal government’s new plan to claw back 50% of fraudulent Social Security overpayments, a welcome development. Here’s the thing: the clawbacks hadn’t started yet. But in my optimism, I decorated the story with this graph, which showed the largest drop-off in Social Security payments in history, starting this year …

… If large numbers of Centene’s clients are disappearing, and Social Security payouts are plummeting simultaneously, it’s not just plausible, it’s even likely that we’re seeing the same people vanish from two systems at once …”

I would encourage you to go and read all of that post about this topic. But the important thing is that two giants of the social safety net saw sudden and precipitous drops in key indicators.

Which brings me back to the municipal workers in Illinois.

ILLINOIS MUNICIPAL RETIREMENT FUND

ANNUAL COMPREHENSIVE FINANCIAL REPORT

For the years ended December 31, 2024 and December 31, 2023

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*the above graph only uses the data from the Retirees and Beneficiaries table.

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page 91 (TABLE V - Schedules of Adds and Removals from Rolls (Last ten years))

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page 102 (TABLE IX - Benefit Expense by Type (Last ten years))

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page 103 (TABLE XI- Operating Statistics - Number of Initial Benefit Payments (Last ten years))

*strangely, the following table has the opposite trend from all the others - it shows a dramatic increase (a doubling) from 2023 to 2024 for the number of “Initial Death Benefit Payments”.

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page 107 (TABLE XIX- Average Initial Benefit Payment Amounts (Last ten years))

*the next table has the most perplexing number of all. What exactly happened to the “Average Initial Lump Sum Death Benefit Payment Amount”??? How do you go from $53,025 to $4,602 in the span of one year?

* notice that for “Annual Disability”, the initial average payment was cut in half from 2023 to 2024.

Are we seeing a similar situation in this extreme drop off that Jeff Childers noticed?

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In searching the annual report for a description of this benefit, I came across these references:

page 28 (Death Benefits)

“The named beneficiaries of a deceased retired member receive their share of a one-time death benefit of $3,000. In addition to the lump sum benefit, an eligible spouse receives a monthly pension equal to 50% (66 2/3% for ECO retirees and Tier 2 members) of the member’s pension. The beneficiaries of an active member who had at least one year of service, receive a lump sum benefit equal to one year’s earnings (limited to the pensionable earnings cap for Tier 2 members) plus the member’s contributions with interest. Death benefits paid upon the death of an inactive member vary depending on the member’s age and service.”

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page 96 (REFUNDS)

“If, upon a member’s death, all of the member contributions with interest were not paid as a refund or pension to either the member or his or her spouse, the beneficiary will receive any balance of the member’s account.”

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page 99 (DEATH BENEFITS)

“Beneficiaries of active members who have more than one year of service, or whose deaths are job-related, are entitled to lump sum IMRF death benefits. If the member was not vested, or vested without an eligible spouse, the death benefit is equal to one year’s earnings (limited to pensionable earnings cap for Tier 2 members) plus any balance in the member’s account. Eligible spouses of deceased, vested, active members may choose the lump sum or a monthly surviving spouse pension. Beneficiaries of inactive, non-vested members receive a lump sum payment of any balance in the member’s account, including interest. If the beneficiary is an eligible spouse of an inactive, vested member age 55 or older, the spouse may choose between the lump sum payment or a death benefit of $3,000, plus a monthly surviving spouse pension. Beneficiaries of retired members receive a $3,000 death benefit. Eligible spouses also receive a surviving spouse pension.”

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I may reach out to Jeff Childers to get his assessment of these numbers, but my gut feeling, as a layman, is that we are seeing a very significant event in this retirement system.

The two opposing factors of:

• a doubling of the number of initial death benefit payments

• and a massive drop in the dollar amount of initial lump sum death benefit payments

leads me to wonder if what we are seeing are signs of members dying at a younger age, before they have accumulated larger pension benefits?

But how would that reconcile with the very reduced mortality numbers we see everywhere else in the report? It is very confusing, I’ll admit. Might it mean that in those reduced numbers, the ratio of younger workers is rising?

I simply do not know for sure.

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*in case you have forgotten …

Pandemic Milestones:

January 20, 2020

-First covid case in the U.S.

December 11, 2020

-Pfizer Emergency Use Authorization

December 18, 2020

-Moderna Emergency Use Authorization

August 23, 2021

-Pfizer full FDA approval

January 31, 2022

-Moderna full FDA approval

April 10, 2023

-Biden declares the end of the pandemic

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