Tag Archives: ProPublica

How Much Is Your Arm Worth?

13 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Disabilities, Employment Law, Workers' Compensation

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How Much Is Your Arm Worth? Depends On Where You Work, by Michael Grabell, ProPublica, and Howard Berkes, NPR, ProPublica Blog

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-much-is-your-arm-worth-depends-where-you-work

Each state determines its own workers’ compensation benefits, which means workers in neighboring states can end up with dramatically different compensation for identical injuries.

At the time of their accidents, Jeremy Lewis was 27, Josh Potter 25.

The men lived within 75 miles of each other. Both were married with two children about the same age. Both even had tattoos of their children’s names.

Their injuries, suffered on the job at Southern industrial plants, were remarkably similar, too. Each man lost a portion of his left arm in a machinery accident.

After that, though, their paths couldn’t have diverged more sharply: Lewis received just $45,000 in workers’ compensation for the loss of his arm. Potter was awarded benefits that could surpass $740,000 over his lifetime.

The reason: Lewis lived and worked in Alabama, which has the nation’s lowest workers’ comp benefits for amputations. Potter had the comparative good fortune of losing his arm across the border in Georgia, which is far more generous when it comes to such catastrophic injuries.

This disparity grimly illustrates the geographic lottery that governs compensation for workplace injuries in America. Congress allows each state to determine its own benefits, with no federal minimums, so workers who live across state lines from each other can experience entirely different outcomes for identical injuries.

Nearly every state has what’s known as a ‘schedule of benefits’ that divides up the body like an Angus beef chart. . . .

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New Federal Rules for Payday Loans.

28 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by in Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumer Law, Credit Repair, PayDay Loans

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Let The Game of Whack-A-Mole Begin: Feds Put Forward New Payday Rules, by Paul Kiel, ProPublica

http://www.propublica.org/article/let-the-game-of-whack-a-mole-begin-feds-put-forward-new-payday-rules

New rules put forward by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would have a major impact on the high-cost loan industry. But if history is any guide, lenders will quickly find some loopholes.

If there’s any industry that has mastered the art of the loophole, it’s high-cost lending. When faced with unwanted regulation, lenders are well-practiced at finding an opening that will allow them to charge triple-digit interest to their customers. As we have reported, they’ve been playing a giant, ongoing game of whack-a-mole with regulators and lawmakers in states across the country over the past decade or so.

Here’s only a partial list of dodges that have been employed over the years by payday and other high-cost lenders: posing as a credit-repair organization, posing as a mortgage lender, using a bank as a front, using a Native American tribe as a front, offering cash for free to hook borrowers, lengthening loan terms when rules targeted short-term loans, larding loans with useless insurance.

But after fights in cities and states across the country, the industry now faces its most powerful foe yet. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created by the 2010 financial reform bill, has the authority to regulate high-cost loans on the federal level for the first time. And on Thursday morning, the agency unveiled a first draft of new rules that would sharply reduce the number of payday loans made in the country. You can expect lenders to respond by opening up their playbook. . . .

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Public Schools’ Limits on Student Restraints And Isolation.

12 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by in Civil Rights, Excessive Force

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Virginia Passes Bill to Rein in Restraints of School Kids, by Heather Vogell, ProPublica

http://tinyurl.com/n5t4omb

Virginia lawmakers have passed a bill requiring state leaders to set limits on how public schools can restrain or isolate students.

Last summer, ProPublica and NPR reported that new federal data showed the practices – which can include pinning down or tying up students or locking them alone in dark rooms – were used more than 267,000 times nationwide in the 2012 school year. Hundreds of children are injured each year and at least 20 have died as a result. . . .

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Are Debt Collection Laws Out of Date and Overly Harsh?

26 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by in Consumer Law, Debt Collection, Garnishment

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Old Debts, Fresh Pain: Weak Laws Offer Debtors Little Protection, by Paul Kiel, ProPublica, and Chris Arnold, NPR, ProPublica (This story was co-published with NPR.)

http://www.propublica.org/article/old-debts-fresh-pain-weak-laws-offer-debtors-little-protection

Like any American family living paycheck to paycheck, Conrad Goetzinger and Cassandra Rose hope that if they make the right choices, their $13-an-hour jobs will keep the lights on, put food in the fridge and gas in the car.

But every two weeks, the Omaha, Neb. couple is reminded of a choice they didn’t make and can’t change: A chunk of both of their paychecks disappears before they see it, seized to pay off old debts.

The seizures are the latest tactic of debt collectors who have tracked the couple for years, twice scooping every penny out of Goetzinger’s bank account and even attempting to seize his personal property. For Goetzinger, 29, they’re the bewildering consequences of a laptop loan he didn’t pay off after high school; for Rose, 33, a painful reminder of more than $20,000 in medical bills racked up while uninsured. The garnishments, totaling about $760 each month, comprise the single largest expense in the budget.

‘I honestly dread paydays,’ said Goetzinger. ‘Because I know it’s gone by Saturday afternoon, by the time we go grocery shopping.’

Across the country, millions of other workers face a similar struggle: how to live when a large fraction of their paycheck is diverted for a consumer debt, as ProPublica and NPR reported Monday. The highest rates of garnishment are among workers who, like Rose and Goetzinger, earn between $25,000 and $40,000, but the numbers are nearly as high for those who earn even less, according to a new study by ADP, the nation’s largest payroll services provider.

Those who fall into this system find their futures determined by laws that consumer advocates say are outdated, overly punitive and out of touch with the financial reality faced by many Americans. . . .

Permacookies – AT&T’s and Verizon’s Way Of Saying “Hello.”

16 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by in Apple, Cell Phones, Cybersecurity, iPad, iPhones, Legal Technology, Mac, Search Engines, Tablets

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AT&T Kills The ‘Permacookie,’ Stops Tracking Customers’ Internet Usage (For Now), by Nick Mediati, PC World

http://tinyurl.com/kff7k94

In recent weeks, Verizon and AT&T have been caught up in a privacy firestorm over their use of so-called ‘permacookies,’ a method of tracking what their users do while browsing the Web with the intent of sharing that data with advertisers. Verizon’s permacookie program lives on, but AT&T has ceased the practice, ProPublica reported on Friday.

At least for now.

AT&T tells ProPublica that its use of permacookies was ‘part of a test,’ which has since wrapped up, but the company says that it ‘may still launch a program to sell data collected by its tracking number.’ For its part, AT&T says that it will allow customers to opt out of the program if—or when—it decides to use permacookies for advertising purposes.

The story behind the story: Permacookies aren’t cookies in the traditional sense: Instead, they’re unique identifiers appended to website addresses you type in on your device that let carriers see what kinds of sites you visit.

Permacookies exist for the same reason traditional tracking cookies exist—so advertisers can see what sorts of things you might be interested and serve up related ads in the hopes that you’ll click on them. But unlike regular tracking cookies, which you can easily delete from your browser or block entirely, there’s no way of removing or blocking permacookies since they’re handled entirely by the carrier. . . .

Insurers Using Generic Drugs To Shift Costs To Sick?

17 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Affordable Care Act, Drug Promotion, Health Care Benefits, Health Law, Health Reform

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A New Way Insurers are Shifting Costs to the Sick, by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica (This story was co-published with The New York Times’ The Upshot.)

http://tinyurl.com/kaaelvg

By charging higher prices for generic drugs that treat certain illness, health insurers may be violating the spirit of the Affordable Care Act, which bans discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions.

Health insurance companies are no longer allowed to turn away patients because of their pre-existing conditions or charge them more because of those conditions. But some health policy experts say insurers may be doing so in a more subtle way: by forcing people with a variety of illnesses — including Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and epilepsy — to pay more for their drugs.

Insurers have long tried to steer their members away from more expensive brand name drugs, labeling them as ‘non-preferred’ and charging higher co-payments. But according to an editorial published Wednesday in the American Journal of Managed Care, several prominent health plans have taken it a step further, applying that same concept even to generic drugs.

The Affordable Care Act bans insurance companies from discriminating against patients with health problems, but that hasn’t stopped them from seeking new and creative ways to shift costs to consumers. In the process, the plans effectively may be rendering a variety of ailments ‘non-preferred,’ according to the editorial.

‘It is sometimes argued that patients should have ‘skin in the game’ to motivate them to become more prudent consumers,’ the editorial says. ‘One must ask, however, what sort of consumer behavior is encouraged when all generic medicines for particular diseases are ‘non-preferred’ and subject to higher co-pays.’ . . .

Canvas Fingerprinting – The Online Computer Tracking Device Almost Impossible To Block.

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Computer Forensics, Cybersecurity, Identity Theft, Legal Technology

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Meet the Online Tracking Device That is Virtually Impossible to Block, by Julia Angwin, ProPublica

(This story was co-published with Mashable.)

http://tinyurl.com/mbqqrw

Update: After this article was published, YouPorn contacted us to say it had removed AddThis technology from its website, saying that the website was ‘completely unaware that AddThis contained a tracking software that had the potential to jeopardize the privacy of our users.’  A spokeswoman for the German digital marketer Ligatus also said that is no longer running its test of canvas fingerprinting, and that it has no plans to use it in the future.

A new, extremely persistent type of online tracking is shadowing visitors to thousands of top websites, from WhiteHouse.gov to YouPorn.com.

First documented in a forthcoming paper by researchers at Princeton University and KU Leuven University in Belgium, this type of tracking, called canvas fingerprinting, works by instructing the visitor’s Web browser to draw a hidden image. Because each computer draws the image slightly differently, the images can be used to assign each user’s device a number that uniquely identifies it.

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Like other tracking tools, canvas fingerprints are used to build profiles of users based on the websites they visit — profiles that shape which ads, news articles, or other types of content are displayed to them.

But fingerprints are unusually hard to block: They can’t be prevented by using standard Web browser privacy settings or using anti-tracking tools such as AdBlock Plus.

The researchers found canvas fingerprinting computer code, primarily written by a company called AddThis, on 5 percent of the top 100,000 websites. . . .

ProPublica’s Ongoing Series and Investigation Into Medicare Waste And Fraud.

12 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by in Criminal Law, False Claims Act, Health Law, Medicare Fraud

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Fanny Pack Mixup Unravels Massive Medicare Fraud Scheme, by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica

http://www.propublica.org/article/fanny-pack-mixup-unravels-massive-medicare-fraud-scheme

This article is part of an ongoing investigation by ProPublica into Medicare fraud. This is just one of several articles currently at ProPublica about its investigation. -CCE

Two secretaries in a doctor’s office have pleaded guilty and a pharmacy owner faces charges in a scam that Medicare allowed to thrive for more than two years.

The fraud scheme began to unravel last fall, with the discovery of a misdirected stack of bogus prescriptions — and a suspicious spike in Medicare drug spending tied to a doctor in Key Biscayne, Fla.

Now it’s led to two guilty pleas, as well as an ongoing criminal case against a pharmacy owner.

Last year, ProPublica chronicled how lax oversight had led to rampant waste and fraud in Medicare’s prescription drug program, known as Part D. As part of that series, we wrote about Dr. Carmen Ortiz-Butcher, a kidney specialist whose Part D prescriptions soared from $282,000 in 2010 to $4 million the following year. The value of her prescriptions rose to nearly $5 million in 2012, the most recent year available.

But no one in Medicare bothered to ask her about the seemingly huge change in her practice, Ortiz-Butcher’s attorney said. She stumbled across a sign of trouble last September, after asking a staffer to mail a fanny pack to her brother. But instead of receiving the pack, he received a package of prescriptions purportedly signed by the doctor, lawyer Robert Mayer said last year. Ortiz-Butcher immediately alerted authorities.

Since then, investigators have uncovered a web of interrelated scams that, together, cost the federal government up to $7 million, documents show. . . .

ProPublica Update Report On Guns In America.

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Appellate Law, Gun Control Laws, Recent Links and Articles, Second Amendment, Stand Your Ground Law

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The Best Reporting on Guns in America, by Blair Hickman, Lois Beckett, Cora Currier and Suevon Lee, ProPublica

http://tinyurl.com/k9defcv

Update: With last weekend’s shootings in Santa Barbara, this collection, first published July 24, 2012, unfortunately seems relevant again. We’ve re-organized our roundup and added new reporting about guns and gun violence in America—looking at mass shootings and mental health, as well as other kinds of gun violence.

Please include your suggestions of other stories in the comments.

Are Mass Shootings Increasing? Depends on How You Count Them

Criminologists have made the same point again and again: the number of mass shootings in America is not increasing. Experts told the Los Angeles Times that mass shootings represent only a small fraction of the annual deaths due to gun violence, and that police data indicate that the overall count of mass shootings per year has not shown any significant increase over time. This conclusion is based on the FBI’s broad definition of a mass murder: four or more people murdered in the same incident, typically in the same location. . . .

Justice Department’s Attempt To Reduce Sexual Assault in Prisons. Will It Work?

17 Saturday May 2014

Posted by in Criminal Law, Department of Corrections, Justice Reform, Prison Elimination Reform Act, Sexual Assault

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Sentenced to Wait: Efforts to End Prison Rape Stall Again, by Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica

http://tinyurl.com/n7oytlp

Texas prison inmates report being raped at some of the highest rates in the country, and the problem only seems to be worsening: The three most recent reports issued by the U.S. Department of Justice show stubbornly high levels of reported sexual assault.

But late last month, Texas Gov. Rick Perry wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder signaling that he’d rather lose federal funds for corrections than comply with new rules under the Prison Rape Elimination Act requiring states to substantially improve detection and prevention of sexual assaults in prisons. . . .

Big Banks, Big Business, And The DOJ.

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Consumer Law, Contract Law, Criminal Law, Intentional Misrepresentation, SEC, White Collar Crime

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Big Banks, Business and Butter: Highlights From Our Q&A on Corporate Impunity, by Blair Hickman, ProPublica

http://bit.ly/1fCRh1R

Reporter Jesse Eisinger offers his thoughts on the lack of white-collar prosecutions, journalism and the Green Bay Packers.

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I don’t think enough attention has been paid to the fact that the white collar laws are inadequate, so there haven’t been many proposed remedies. One thing the DoJ should use is the ‘willful blindness’ or ‘conscious disregard’ charge. As Judge Jed Rakoff wrote recently in the New York Review of Books: Such a charge ‘is a well-established basis on which federal prosecutors have asked juries to infer intent, including in cases involving complexities, such as accounting rules, at least as esoteric as those involved in the events leading up to the financial crisis. And while some federal courts have occasionally expressed qualifications about the use of the willful blindness approach to prove intent, the Supreme Court has consistently approved it.’ . . .

Obama’s New Clemency Initiative.

27 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by in Clemency, Criminal Law, Department of Corrections, Justice Reform

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Three Things Obama’s New Clemency Initiative Doesn’t Do, by Kara Brandeisky, ProPublica

http://tinyurl.com/lury8bw

Today [April 23, 2014], the Department of Justice outlined expanded criteria that could allow prisoners convicted of non-violent crimes to win early release from prison. Under the new initiative, the Office of the Pardon Attorney will fast-track commutation applications from inmates who have served more than 10 years for non-violent offenses and who were well-behaved while imprisoned.

As part of the shift, the department is replacing Pardon Attorney Ronald Rodgers. Two years ago, we reported that Rodgers had failed to provide critical information to the White House in urging denial of a commutation for Clarence Aaron, a model prisoner who served nearly 20 years for a small role in a drug deal. . . .

Latest U.S. Supreme Court Opinion Rejects Campaign Spending Limits.

05 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by in Appellate Judges, Campaign Contributions, Government, Judges, United States Supreme Court

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Supreme Court’s Rejection Of U.S. Campaign Funding Limits Opens Door For Big-Money Donors, by Lawrence Hurley, Reuters with additional reporting by David Morgan, Gabriel Debenedetti, Andy Sullivan and Jeff Mason; Editing by David Lindsey, Howard Goller and Dan Grebler

http://tinyurl.com/qhhqf9e

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a key pillar of federal campaign finance law by allowing donors to give money to as many political candidates, parties and committees as they wish.

In the latest in a series of decisions by the high court that have given big-money donors more influence in U.S. elections, the justices rejected the overall limits on how much individuals can donate during a federal two-year election cycle. . . .

And

Big Sky, Big Money, FRONTLINE in collaboration with PBS Election Marketplace (video) (related to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission)

http://tinyurl.com/laou3aq

You will find additional links related to the post above by ProPublica and FRONTLINE on the same page. -CCE

Murder Charge Rejected in Mississippi Fetal Harm Case.

05 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by in Criminal Law, Drug Possession, Life Term, Manslaughter, Mississippi Supreme Court, Murder

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Judge Throws Out Murder Charge in Mississippi Fetal Harm Case, by Nina Martin, ProPublica

http://tinyurl.com/k652sjc

The ruling means that the woman whose drug use had her facing a possible life term can at most be charged with manslaughter in the death of her stillborn daughter. . . . .

Medicare Study of Injuries and Fatalities in Skilled Nursing Facilities.

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Health Law, Skilled Nursing Facilities, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

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One Third of Skilled Nursing Patients Harmed in Treatment, by Marshall Allen, ProPublica

http://tinyurl.com/kdrmeaz

A study by Medicare’s inspector general of skilled nursing facilities says nearly 22,000 patients were injured and more than 1,500 died in a single month — a higher rate of medical errors than hospitals. . . .

Why Doctors Stay Silent When They See Mistakes Made By Other Doctors.

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Health Law, Health Reform, Medical Malpractice

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Why Doctors Stay Mum About Mistakes Their Colleagues Make, by Marshall Allen, ProPublica

http://tinyurl.com/q2tknhf

A video discussion about why doctors stay silent about this problem is at the end of this post. -CCE

Patients don’t always know when their doctor has made a medical error. But other doctors do.

A Tool to Find Drug Companies’ Payments to Doctors For Drug Promotion.

29 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by in Drug Promotion, Evidence, Health Law, Health Reform

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Dollars for Docs – How Industry Dollars Reach Your Doctors, by Jeremy B. Merrill, Charles Ornstein, Tracy Weber, Sisi Wei, and Dan Nguyen, ProPublica

http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/

ProPublica’s website provides a wealth of information about the ways the drug companies use medical institutions and physicians to promote their products. -CCE

Drug companies have long kept secret details of the payments they make to doctors and other health professionals for promoting their drugs. But 15 companies have begun publishing the information, some because of legal settlements. Use this tool to search for payments.