The Guardian uses the provocative word “spying,” which amps up emotions about this topic, but a new study by the Center for Democracy and Technology says school systems are tracking usage of the computers, laptops and tablets they loaned out to kids.
When you drill down into the story, you find what kind of surveillance the schools are using.
Thousands of school districts across the United States have installed surveillance software on school-provided devices to monitor their students’ online interactions. If a student emails or chats with another student saying they’ve been thinking of hurting themselves or that there is trouble at home, an AI bot or a human moderator watching over the messages in real time can send an alert to a teacher or administrator, allowing the teacher to jump in within minutes and ask if everything is OK.
These programs, such as Bark, Gnosis IQ, Gaggle, and Lightspeed, can cost the schools tens of thousands of dollars to implement, and they can be set up to search for language and online behavior indicating the possibility of violent tendencies, suicidal ideation, drug use, pornography use, or eating disorders.
Wired reported on this issue during the summer and found some schools use programs that allow a teacher to monitor what tabs a student has open on a school-issued device. The teacher can even close open tabs that might be interfering with schoolwork. Wired found that teachers are only supposed to have that power during school hours.
I come back to the Guardian headline. If a teacher is looking at a student’s school-issued computer during school hours, is that “spying” or is that more like a teacher trying to keep kids on task and learning?
TV station finds doctors and a hospital sending out big bills for COVID tests
Free-standing emergency rooms in some places are making a killing off of COVID-19 tests.
KPRC in Houston dug around and found one insurance company had paid $18,000 for two tests that are supposed to be free. The station found:
… doctors gouging patients and insurance companies for tests that are supposed to be free.
Nasal swabs, mouth swabs, rapid tests, and PCRs: There’s more than one way to get tested for COVID-19.
The station found Katie Hillborn, who went to a drive-in clinic run by a local emergency room.
“$3520 for me and $3520 for my daughter,” said Hillborn, referring to the amount Clear Creek Emergency Room billed her insurance company on the first claim it sent.
On top of the $3,250 Hillborn’s insurance was charged for herself and her daughter, there were two more claims for $3,700 each for the doctor’s services.
That was not the only case.
Ruth Kurian’s explanation of benefits showed the River Oaks Emergency Room charged her insurance company $8900 each for her and her husband.
Broken down, the claims were $4,200 for emergency service and another $4,700 for ancillary services totaling $17,861 for two drive-thru COVID-19 tests. The entire bill was paid in full by Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield.
“I was flabbergasted! I never set foot in the building. I spent maybe 5 minutes with a nurse through my car window,” said Kurian.
The New York Times’ terrific reporter Sarah Kliff has been on this story for a while.
Patients, whether with or without insurance, are beginning to find holes in those new coverage programs. Nationwide, people have been hit with unexpected fees and denied claims related to coronavirus tests, according to dozens of bills that The New York Times has reviewed. Insurers have told these patients they could owe from a few dollars to thousands.
About 2.4 percent of coronavirus tests billed to insurers leave the patient responsible for some portion of payment, according to the health data firm Castlight. With 77 million tests performed so far, it could add up to hundreds of thousands of Americans who receive unexpected bills.
In some cases, the charges appear to violate new federal laws that aim to make coronavirus tests free for privately insured patients. In other cases, insurers are interpreting gray areas in these new rules in ways that work in their favor.
Kliff demonstrates how important it can be to teach your audiences to be smart consumers. Spend some time and space in your reporting to tell people how the system is supposed to work.
Experts say federal law requires the insurer to cover the antibody test in full, even out of network. But the rules around the other tests are less clear: The law states that insurers must cover services related to obtaining a coronavirus test but doesn’t identify what type of care makes the cut. Some providers seem to tack on unrelated lab tests. Patients at a drive-through coronavirus testing site in Texas, for example, were unknowingly tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Without clear federal guidance, insurers are left to sift through charges to decide what is related to coronavirus and what isn’t.
No vaccination, no transplant
UCHealth in Colorado says if patients want to be considered for transplants, they must get vaccinated. Local politicians raised questions about the practice but miss the fact that transplant programs around the country have similar thresholds. Most require all sorts of other vaccinations and conditions.
Keep in mind that the requirement is common but not universal.
The protocols are in place because an unvaccinated person would have a poorer chance of surviving a COVID-19 infection.
Should alcoholics be required to be six months sober before kidney transplants? New thinking.
Generally, a person who is both an alcoholic and in need of a liver must show they can be sober for six months before being considered for transplantation. About two-thirds of liver transplant hospitals follow that guideline. The notion is a person must remain sober after transplantation to have a chance of the new liver being able to heal.
But NPR just ran a story that says new data shows the six-month mark does not show a person will remain sober and a lot of people die in the six months they are trying to hit the mark that the transplant programs require. The NPR story explains:
As the understanding of addiction evolves — to view it as a disease rather than a personal failing — many surgeons and families say the six-month wait unfairly penalizes those with substance use disorder. And with alcoholic liver disease rising among young adults and pandemic-related drinking exacerbating those numbers, it has become a pressing concern.
“We have to move beyond denying people lifesaving therapy because we think they don't deserve it,” says Dr. Andrew Cameron, head of the liver transplant program at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore. Doctors don’t withhold treatment from people with diabetes who are obese or people with sexually transmitted infections who had unprotected sex, he adds.
Cameron and his colleagues published a study this August, which examined patients with alcoholic liver disease who were made to wait six months and those who were not. The study found:
- About 20% in each group returned to drinking one year after their transplants.
- That means about 80% stayed sober, regardless of how long they abstained from alcohol before the surgery.
12,000 people are waiting for liver transplants in the United States.
Ignore scary headlines about a mega comet ‘heading for us’ unless you live on Saturn