Judge’s decision could mean big changes lie ahead for college athletes – National Consumers League

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In March I wrote a blog about the NCAA TV advertising juggernaut during the March Madness tournament. I suggested that the millions pouring into NCAA and university coffers from the blood, sweat, and tears of unpaid college athletes was wrong and that these athletes deserved to be paid a fair wage. 

We’re not quite there yet, but federal Judge Claudia Wilken ruled last week that college athletes have a rightful interest in advertising that exploits their names and images. Wilken reached a compromise on giving athletes the right to be paid for their time. Wilken ruled that the NCAA can cap players at $5,000 a year and keep the payments in trust until graduation or until players leave rather than opening up the free market to college athletes, which would mean the richest schools would have the best teams.

Wilken’s decision opens the door – but just a crack – to student athletes getting a piece of the profits that the NCAA and its member schools make off of their labor. But it’s a decent start and a wake up call to the NCAA to begin to share the wealth with the very athletes that make them so much money. 

Who wants my health data and what are they going to do with it? The paradox of data privacy – National Consumers League

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Do we really know how our health information is being used?  While patients want to know that their personal health information is protected by the HIPAA privacy rule, patient information is one of the best ways for the health system to improve care by learning from the patient experience.

At a recent annual meeting of Consumers United for Evidence Based Health Care (CUE), a national coalition of health and consumer advocacy organizations committed to empowering consumers to make the best use of evidence-based healthcare,  a panel of speakers discussed issues around patient privacy and the availability of data for research.

As HIPAA currently operates, patient consent is needed for formal research that “contributes to the general knowledge.” But the internal use of personal health information for health care operations and to improve care , is NOT covered by HIPAA and thus patient informed consent is not required. In other words, as Deven McGraw from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips explained, if a health care organization uses research for its own internal use, then they are not subject to HIPAA requirements, but if an organization wants to share what is learned with the outside world to improve public health, then HIPAA applies. If we want to encourage sharing of research findings shouldn’t we make it easier, and not harder, to do so?  It seems that under the current paradigm we do not incentivize the sharing of knowledge.

Nancy Kass, of Johns Hopkins Bloomsburg School of Public Health, stated that it is time for a new ethical framework for a learning healthcare system that will increase the likelihood of continuous learning, and in which participants’ rights are protected. According to Kass, what happens in clinical practice should be used to learn about how we can improve health care for our own practices as well as others. While we may be concerned about use of our health information for research purposes, our personal health information is already being used in many ways – ranging from ensuring quality of care to licensing and certification purposes. With the advent of electronic health records, how clinical practices use our data has drastically changed. “You want to protect patients from risk but also have good research,” said Kass. The reality is that there already is a systematic collection of patient data (without informed consent), which is used for internal operations – and patients have no idea.

How do we create a trusted data collection system?  One way is to get patients more involved in research. PCORI, a government agency, was initiated by the Affordable Care Act to involve patients in a meaningful way in research. Research results should be shared with the patients who participate in the research in an accessible format, where hopefully conclusions are made based on a common data model.  We should also improve patient consent forms so that they are understandable and accessible to patients. Right now the consent forms are complicated and full of legal terms that make you wonder if the form is designed to protect the patient or the research. Peter Doshi, University of Maryland, explained that current consent forms do not say that if your data will or will not be used by others for the good of public health. Informed consent forms should change and FDA has recently developed a model consent form.

Experiences with researchers failing to obtain informed consent and not being transparent about research goals, such as with the Tuskegee experiment, demonstrate the importance of both informed consent and transparency in the collection of data. The dilemma is how we balance the need for those protections, while encouraging research to improve clinical care.

In this age of electronic health records and ongoing collection of our personal data wherever we turn, both patients and health care providers and organizations have a responsibility to promote and engage in continuous learning activities to improve the quality of clinical care. We need to increase the likelihood of continuous learning, while ensuring that learning proceeds in an ethically acceptable fashion and that participants’ rights are protected.   Health care providers and organizations have a responsibility to be transparent and disclose all the ways data are being used, and the patient has an obligation to participate in these learning activities so that clinical care can be improved for all of us.

The unfairness of unpredictable and unstable work schedules – National Consumers League

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Ever had a shift canceled at the last minute or been called in to work on your day off?

For 74% of adults in today’s labor market last minute shift changes are not rare occurrences. Work schedules in low-wage jobs are often unpredictable and unstable, making it nearly impossible for employees to plan their lives around their constantly changing schedules.

Last week, New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse profiled workers struggling to find balance in their work and life responsibilities in A Push To Give Steadier Shifts to Part-Timers. Many of the workers’ stories involved similar issues: problems commuting to work only to find that there is no work, ever-changing shifts making child care an impossibility, and the constant worry of not having enough money to pay the bills.

According to the National Women’s Law Center, there are nearly 20 million low-wage workers in the US and 76% of workers in the ten largest low-wage jobs are women. While low wages, typically paying less than $10.10 an hour, make it hard for workers to support themselves and their families, it is not the only problem they face. Too often these jobs include work scheduling policies and practices that pose problems for workers with significant responsibilities outside the job, including caregiving, pursuing higher education and training for or holding down a second job.

“The volatile work schedules of today erode earning potential, push workers out of the work force, and exacerbate inequality, especially for women and workers of color who are more likely to work part-time jobs. For a fair paycheck, these workers need wages and hours with dignity,” said Carrie Gleason, Director of the Fair Workweek Initiative for the Center for Popular Democracy.

With some employers using “just-in-time scheduling” to lower labor costs, it puts workers’ schedules at the mercy of consumer demands and often results in employees being given very little advance notice of their work schedules. For employees this type of policy means fluctuating hours between full-time and part-time, the inability to pursue further education, and the uncertainty of having enough hours to pay the rent, utilities, groceries and childcare.

Fortunately, Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and George Miller (D-CA) and Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced the Schedules That Work Act this week in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. The Act would help combat the problem of unpredictable and unstable work schedules. It lays out a modest variety of rights and protections for employees including: a voice in their work schedules, advance notice of schedule, protection against employer retaliation, and the right to report pay and split-shift pay.

Fair, flexible, and reliable scheduling is a simple way to ensure workers are treated with dignity and respect. In a perfect world employers would view employees as human beings with competing life demands rather than numbers on a spreadsheet. The Schedules That Work Act takes an important step towards that goal.

To learn more about workers’ scheduling struggles, please click here.
To learn more about the Schedules That Work Act, please click here.

Corinthian College is the first domino to fall in a misleading industry – National Consumers League

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Its an odd thing to cheer when an institution collapses, but in the recent case of the for-profit Corinthian College – one of the country’s largest for-profit colleges – applauding what appears to be its downfall, is the right thing to do. NCL has applauded actions by the Department of Education and other federal entities to insist on transparent and accurate results reporting for these schools. 

The rise of the for-profit college industry, which largely recruits low income, military, and students of color falsely promise a solid education and good job prospects upon graduation when in reality, they have dismal records on both counts. For-profit colleges have been yet another example of industry engaging in predatory practices that target low-income Americans.

For profit colleges are dependent on students taking out hefty federal loans in order to pay the often sky-high tuition. Without federal loan programs, the vast majority of these colleges cannot survive. There are some exceptions – those students getting short term degrees to be a dental hygienist, medical technician, or other technical degrees may in fact get the training they need to get real jobs that pay decent wages upon graduation. But there are far more deceptive actors in this industry than good ones. When the federal government began tightening up requirements on for-profits getting, schools like Corinthian went into a financial tailspin.

Since January several states and the US Department of Education have been investigating Corinthian. NCL has long supported efforts by federal regulators to crack down on these schools.

Corinthian has 72,000 enrolled students and 12,000 employees. It has now agreed to shut down 100 campuses in the coming months. The school’s downfall came when it refused to provide DOE with data on how students were succeeding and admitted to the California attorney general Kamala Harris that it had falsified data on whether graduates were getting jobs, and had lied to investors as well. The company advertised rates suggesting that 100 percent of graduates were getting jobs when in fact not a single student had done so within the prescribed period of time.

The lawsuits say the school heavily recruited low-income single parents on the brink of poverty. In June federal officials put Corinthian on a 21 day delay for receiving federal aid. Corinthian said it would have to shut down because even a short-term delay in access to federal funds would result in its downfall.

Not surprisingly other for-profit colleges are lobbying heavily to weaken rules that allow them to get access to federal loan monies. These lobbying efforts should not succeed. While the Obama administration’s rules could be stronger, the current rules will help stop bad actors. Under the rules, for example, the program’s loan default rate could not exceed 30 percent – the for- profit colleges typically have a much larger default rate because the vast majority of students drop out or can’t find jobs after graduation and thus cannot repay their loans.

Most important to protecting low-income students lured to take out loans for worthless degrees, schools that lose eligibility for federal funds should have to pay back the loans and Pell grants themselves and not saddle students with this debt. Corinthian College, one of the biggest, is the first to fall, but others engaging in similar false and deceptive practices will go down as well, and that is for the best. 

Should the word “natural” be banned from food labels? – National Consumers League

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According to The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “natural” means…very little.  The only guidelines FDA provides are that foods labeled as natural should not contain added color, artificial flavors or synthetic substances.  These loose guidelines, which were put into effect in 1993 as an informal policy, are puzzling consumers and food manufactures alike.

So much contention surrounds the word natural that the Grocery Manufacturers Association came out in support of the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act introduced in the House last April.  The bill would require FDA to define the term “natural” for use on food and beverage products, finally providing more guidance for industry and consumers.

The issue with defining the word natural is that it’s difficult to draw a line where natural stops and artificial begins.  Take an apple for example.  That seems to be very natural as it grows directly from the ground and little to no processing occurs but would it still be considered natural if it contained synthetic chemical preservatives?  What about synthetic pesticide residue? Could a very processed food like Bugles be considered “natural” if it was made entirely from products originating from the earth?

Not only was FDA faced with a massive grey zone of “natural” definitions when they first requested comment on the word’s definition twenty years ago, but they also needed to protect first amendment rights and therefore could not prohibit its use altogether.  Ultimately, FDA took a hands off approach.  Labeling practices have become more contentious, with political battles surrounding GMOs and country of origin labeling, and the time has come to address the issue.

At the end of the day, manufacturers just want to sell their product. Consumers have come to associate the term “natural” with healthy food. And so, food manufacturers continue to label as many foods as possible natural to attract more buyers. The lack of a strict definition for “natural,” however, causes it to be used in a variety of circumstances where it makes unhealthy foods, look healthy or “good” to consumers.  Even if FDA managed to pull together a definition for natural, it would no doubt be abused.  Soda made from cane sugar or other natural ingredients would be deemed “natural” (case in point Seven-Up, which later dropped their 100% natural claims).  The human body doesn’t necessarily process it differently and it certainly isn’t healthy no matter how the ingredients were produced.

Soda is just one example of the many possibilities where natural could be misused.  The term “natural” should simply be banned from labeling.  It carries little to no meaning in terms of its perceived health benefits and should not serve as decision making tool for consumers.

Teen safety: Preventing workplace violence – National Consumers League

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julie.jpgBy Julie Duffy, Child Labor Coalition Intern

No one expected 18 year-old Christina LoBrutto’s first overnight shift at the Pathmark grocery store in Old Bridge, New Jersey to be her last. Sadly, however, the recent high school graduate lost her life after being fatally shot by a co-worker suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). LoBrutto’s tragic and deadly story of workplace violence is not as uncommon as you might think. 

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), over 2 million Americans workers, as young as 15, report being victims of workplace violence each year. OSHA classifies workplace violence as “any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, or other threatening disruptive behavior that occurs at the work site.” The United States Department of Labor cites workplace violence as the fourth leading cause in workplace deaths. Teens are often the most susceptible to workplace violence because they are not properly trained in workplace safety and activism. Proper training, for both teens and their employers could save many young lives.

On June 23rd, David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA, and teen safety peer educators held a phone press conference on how to prevent workplace violence. The panel stressed the importance of training programs about workplace safety. Such training programs can teach teens about identifying an unsafe work environment and how to voice their concerns to their employers. Training programs can also help educate employers on how to maintain a safe workplace. Under OSHA’s mandates, employers have the responsibility to provide a safe place of employment free from recognized hazards, including workplace violence. This could mean increased use of safety cameras, working alarms, workplace panic buttons, or the presence of security guards.  

Since 1978 the Susan Harwood Training Grant Program has trained over 1.8 million workers and employers about how to recognize and prevent health and safety hazards in their workplaces. This summer “Teens Lead @ Work,” a project of Massachusetts Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, plans to educate 540 younger workers between the ages 15-22 on workplace safety in Massachusetts. When it comes to ending workplace violence empowerment is key. Teens should feel confident in the safety of their work environment and comfortable addressing their employers when they feel their workplace is unsafe.   

Yet another study confirms childhood vaccines are safe – National Consumers League

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In not so surprising news, researchers again prove that childhood vaccinations are safe for routine immunizations. At a time when vaccination rates are declining and when once eradicated diseases like measles are resurging (500 cases since January), this report couldn’t have come at a better time. 

This news confirms the importance and safety of vaccines, especially as many parents are declining routine vaccinations for fear of harm. The bottom line: childhood vaccinations don’t cause autism, and they do protect patient and public health.

The results of a comprehensive, systematic review of vaccine safety were released last week in the journal of Pediatrics. This study was done as a follow up to a 2011 Institute of Medicine report, investigating the scientific evidence for potential adverse effects of childhood vaccines. Researchers scoured published data for articles evaluating both vaccine safety, capturing adverse event reports, and describing patient characteristics for immunizations recommended for routine use in children 6 and under.  From an initial batch of over 20,000 research papers, 67 were chosen to be analyzed. Based on the evidence presented in the papers, vaccine safety was classified as being high, moderate, low confidence or insufficient evidence.

This new research can be added to a long list of already published medical information that support vaccinations effectiveness to prevent terrible, life threatening diseases and illnesses.

Americans are lucky to live in a country that provides access to these safe and effective vaccinations at a relatively low cost. In other countries, it isn’t as easy. The measles vaccine for instance costs less than $1, yet measles is still a leading cause of child death worldwide. The World Health Organization reports that there are 330 child deaths every day due to measles. In America, where the vaccine is completely affordable and there are few barriers towards getting vaccinated, we see parents refuse vaccinations, citing reasons of harm often based on little or no accurate science.

It has been more than half a century since vaccinations for polio, measles, and other diseases were rolled out on a public scale. And illnesses like mumps or measles, once commonplace, are so rare that many US doctors don’t even know how to treat it nor would they know how to identify the characteristic rash and implement safety protocols to prevent spread. Yet today, that is exactly what is happening. 

It’s time for science and rigorous and accurate research studies to be the basis of our health care decision-making, not baseless opinions of non-scientists. Both the FDA and CDC regularly monitor vaccines for safety, even after they have been approved, and have mechanisms to alert the public if issues are found. Let’s all do our part to protect our community’s health by staying current with the recommended vaccinations to prevent the spread of disease.

Here’s a quick recap of what this study found for the childhood vaccinations.

  • DTaP: No evidence for any causal link between side effects or causing diabetes. DTap is for diphtheria toxoid, tetanus toxoid and pertussis. Think, DTaP prevents tetanus and whopping cough.
  • Hib Vaccine: No association with severe side effects. One study found an association with redness and swelling at the injection site. Hib is a serious disease that can affect the lungs, brain, ears.
  • Hepatitis A: Moderate association with excessive bruising (purpura) for children 7 to 17 years of age, which clears up shortly after injection.
  • Hepatitis B: No evidence for causal relationship with neurologic disorders including autism or multiple sclerosis.
  • IPV (Inactivated Polio Virus): Insufficient evidence to claim that this vaccine leads to food allergy sensitivities in newborns.  
  • Influenza vaccines: Low evidence that the vaccine causes flu-like illness in children when vaccinated. The study did find moderate evidence that vaccination leads to mild gastrointestinal events (e.g. vomiting or diahrrea). There is moderate evidence that links flu vaccine to febrile seizures especially when administered at the same time as the pneumococcal vaccine.
  • MMR: The evidence did not support a causal relationship with the vaccine and autism.  There is a moderate association with increased emergency department visits 2-weeks after administration, likely linked to the increase chance of febrile seizures. MMR is the vaccine for mumps, measles and rubella.
  • Meningococcal: The evidence is moderate that the vaccine may cause anaphylaxis in children with allergies to ingredients.
  • PCV13: This vaccine is against pneumonia and has a moderate association of febrile seizures especially when given at the same time as the flu vaccine.
  • Rotavirus Vaccines: Rotavirus causes severe diarrhea in children. The vaccine is moderately associated with intussusception (problem with the intestine that can be fixed with minor surgery), but this is quite rare!
  • Varicella: There is evidence that the vaccine can lead to some illnesses especially in immune-compromised individuals.

 

A conservative war on women is a reality – National Consumers League

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Conservatives bristle at the idea that they are waging a “war on women,” but if you take the sum total of their actions, it’s hard NOT to see it that way. Let’s take the issue of a woman’s right to contraception. Preventing unwanted pregnancies is largely a woman’s responsibility, even today, and the best protection is taking an oral contraception or using a contraceptive patch. When women cannot access contraception it often leads to unwanted pregnancy, which leads to a higher demand for abortion. 

Last week, in a rightwing-orchestrated case known as “Hobby Lobby,” the Supreme Court decided that companies cannot be required to provide their employees with access to birth control. The result for women who are employed by Hobby Lobby, or other companies who argue that providing contraception violates their religious beliefs, is that they have to pay for treatment out of pocket, or forego contraceptive protection and risk unwanted pregnancies. 

However, conservatives for decades – ever since the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade in 1973 protecting the right to abortion – have conducted a campaign against women’s access to the procedure. In some states like Virginia, which until the recent election of a democratic governor and attorney general was on the road to driving all abortion providers out of the state by imposing new onerous requirements on abortion providers, is just one example of a state that has tried to pass extreme measures in recent years to make a woman’s access to abortions more difficult.   

So what happens when women cannot get contraception or an abortion for unwanted pregnancies? They might well be forced to give birth to a child they don’t want and are ill equipped to feed and care for. Low income women are hit the hardest – they may have to quit their job to take care of that child, and if they apply for welfare or food stamp benefits – well, conservatives in Congress have been declaring war on those programs too. A dramatic reduction in food stamp funding passed in the farm bill last year. As a result, many people have been dropped off the rolls, with single mothers and low-income women disproportionately hit by these draconian policies. 

So the vicious cycle of denying women access to contraception, abortion, and then welfare or food stamp benefits to help with them care for an unwanted pregnancy, amounts in my book, to a war on women. It’s an outrage that women bear the brunt of these indefensible policies, but they do. So conservatives should face up to the reality of their mean spirited policies – if the shoe fits wear it – you’re waging nothing less than a war on women.

 

 

In Harris v. Quinn, another slap in the face to workers – National Consumers League

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Last week the Supreme Court‘s 5-4 decision in the Harris v. Quinn case was a slap in the face to working families and especially female employees across the country. In the home healthcare industry, where a vast majority of workers are minority women, the Harris v. Quinn decision eliminated agency fee arrangements for Illinois home healthcare workers. 

The ruling casts doubt and creates insecurity and instability for employers and unions throughout the public sector. The decision creates a special class for Medicaid and state funded home healthcare workers as neither private nor public but ‘partial public employees.’ 

Many of the basic workplace standards and protections that we take for granted as Americans are thanks to the efforts of collective bargaining and organized labor. At issue in this case was whether non-union members could reap the wages, benefits and protections negotiated in a collectively bargained contract without the needing to pay their fair share.

As ‘partial public employees’, the Court rules that the same labor rules do not apply and that workers can opt out of joining a union and not be required to contribute dues to the labor group that negotiates their employment contract – essentially allowing some workers to get free use of an employment consultant/lawyer while everyone else pays. 

At a time when wages are either eroding or remaining stagnant, and income inequality is out of control, joining together to collectively bargain is one of the only proven ways home care workers have to improve their lives and the lives of the people they care for. And with our aging population, the home healthcare industry is one of the fastest growing in the US, yet the workers have very little employment protections.

In the meantime, the Obama Administration must stick to its promise to the 2.5 million home care workers waiting for basic fair pay protections implementing the long-awaited federal companionship worker regulations by January 1, 2015. These new rules will finally extend basic federal minimum wage and overtime protections to the millions of workers who care for seniors and people with disabilities living independently in their homes.

 

GM announces how victims will be compensated – National Consumers League

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Kenneth Feinberg arranged compensation for victims of 9/11, those affected by the BP oil spill, and now, he has announced compensation arrangements for those injured or killed by GM’s faulty ignition switch. Feinberg, a guru of compensation, was a 2010 NCL Trumpeter honoree.

Here’s the system he’s worked out – If you can prove your airbag didn’t go off and you were injured as a result, you’re entitled to compensation. Proving that for victims may be difficult, however, Feinberg said he’s talked to the Center for Auto Safety (CAS), plaintiffs’ lawyers, and victims before determining how the payouts would work.

Anyone who lost a family member gets an automatic $1 million payout. Spouses and dependents get $300,000 each. And it won’t matter if the driver was drinking or bore some responsibility for the crash  – that is different from a lawsuit where a jury would hear that evidence.  The mother of one young victim said, “Its hard to see my daughter reduced to a figure.”

I couldn’t agree more. 

These terrible cases of GM’s negligence, including GM lawyers fighting every claim and denying the defect for years, is hard to swallow. The value of the Feinberg approach is that victims don’t have to spend years litigating and proving their cases. It’s voluntary and if you want to sue, you still can. Bob Hilliard, a plaintiff’s lawyer from Texas who has many of the victims cases in a class action, is quoted in the WSJ as saying he thinks these settlements “don’t seem unfair” and that he is cautiously optimistic. Clarence Ditlow of the CAS thinks Feinberg’s fund should include a presumption that if your GM car stalled, your claim is valid.

But one wonders whether the culture of secrecy at GM and so many companies whose products have hurt consumers will really change. Yes, this will cost GM an estimated $7 billion but that becomes the cost of doing business. No one goes to jail, no one is criminally prosecuted. If corporate officials thought they might go to prison for putting dangerous products on the market and then denying responsibility that would change the calculus in my view. For now, it’s good to know that GM is admitting its wrongdoing, it’s good that Mary Barra is talking about a culture change, and most important, it’s good that victims are getting compensation.