The US health industry gets ever spookier

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The health insurance industry has joined forces with data brokers to vacuum up personal details about hundreds of millions of Americans. The companies are tracking race, education level, TV habits, marital status, net worth, postings on social media, slowness paying bills, and what you order online. Complicated computer algorithms then produce
predictions about how much your health care could cost them.

Are you a woman who recently changed your name? You could be newly married and have a pricey pregnancy pending. Or maybe you’re stressed from a recent divorce. That, too, the computer models predict, may run up your medical bills. Are you a woman who has purchased plus-size clothing? You’re considered at risk of depression. Mental health care can be expensive.
Low-income and a minority? That means, the data brokers say, you are more likely to live in a dilapidated and dangerous neighborhood, increasing your health risks.

Insurers contend that they use the information to spot health issues in their clients — and flag them so they get services they need. And companies like LexisNexis say the data shouldn’t be used to set prices. But as a research scientist from one company told me: “I can’t say it hasn’t happened.”

There sems to be a new privacy scandal every week. We worry about Chinese and Russian spying, but it emerges that we are spied on by our fellow citizens, arguably more thoroughly. The Federal government requires the health industry to strictly adhere to client privacy (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, only protects actual medical information). The insurance industry is not only incredibly bureaucratic and inefficient, but it seems it is breaking the law as well. Chance of such a powerful group of companies being held to account? Zero. On top of this the client has to deal with a system designed to avoid paying out, and which ties the customers up for weeks or months of futile correspondence and time wasting (Cigna for instance).

Epicurean answer: the single payer systems used in France, Germany, UK etc. which cost half or three quarters as much as the American system and have better outcomes. My doctor told me that he was not in the health business just for money, but to help people (I absolutely believe him), but he is not usual. The health system should not prioritize money over patient health. Lousy system!

Hurry up – the human workers will soon be gone!

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Robots modelled on the human hand could soon be deployed on British farms to pick cauliflowers and other vegetables. Harvesting cauliflowers is not straightforward: each head must be assessed, to ensure that it is suitably white and compact, and then carefully prised from its stem, with a few outer leaves still attached to protect the head until it is ready to eat. The human hand is perfect for this task, which is why many farmers prefer to have it done manually – and why scientists at the University of Plymouth stuck closely to it when designing a robot replacement. Their GummiArm – currently being trialled in Cornwall – has jointed arms, cameras and sensors in its “fingers”, which enable it to assess when the caulis are ready. And it isn’t only a brassica-picker: chief designer Dr Martin Stoelen says it could be used to harvest other vegetables, and even repurposed for weeding. For farmers, the technology could be transformative. Harvesting represents up to half of the costs of brassica production. (The Daily Telegraph snd The Week, 17 March 2018)

The techies had better hurry. Soon the Brexiters will have chased the (mostly) East European workers out of the country and we will only have chemically polluted brassicas (free of EU regulations and therefore possibly toxic) sitting unharvested. Even more worrying is the presumed exit of plumbers, carpenters, electricians, plasterers, painters, roofers, glaziers, metalworkers. “Shooting yourself in the foot” as a phrase doesn’t quite describe the disaster.

Concentration camps for prostitutes

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One dark chapter in the American story gets left out of the history books: the American Plan, which detained tens, and possibly hundreds of thousands of women from the 1910s through the 1950s.

Under the plan, conceived during World War I to protect soldiers from “promiscuous” women and the diseases they possibly carried, women were surveilled, picked off the street, detained without due process, imprisoned sometimes for years, and forcefully injected with toxic mercury treatments for sexually transmitted infections they were merely suspected of having. The American Plan laid the groundwork — and sometimes, the actual foundations — for some women’s prisons and arguably led to the mass incarcerations of today. Progressive luminaries like Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Sanger endorsed the plan, as did Earl Warren, forcing its victims, disproportionately women of color, to fight back on their own.

From the incarceration of citizens of Japanese ancestry to the detention of prostitutes, not to mention the treatment of black people, one has to wonder what the Supreme Court of the United States has been thinking in its role as “defender of the Constitution” and of civil rights. It has made some honourable decisions, but the gross misreading of the Constitution in the matter of gun ownwership, and the crass idea that “corporations are people” and can freely use shareholder funds to subvert democracy, suggests that, while legal training in the US might be good, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Justices collectively use their intelligence, common sense, moderation or simple human kindness to good effect.

I fear that, for all the blah about liberty we cannot rely on a Trump Supreme Court to protect us against the drift toward authoritarianism, even less now that Trump has nominated to the Court a hard Right Constitutional literalist who was alledgedly willingly implicated in the un-American Bush torture policy. Epicurus deplored militarism, bullying and loss of individual freedom in his day. We should oppose it now. The United States is lurching in the same direction as, say Poland. Getting it back looks more difficult every day. Too many citizens simply don’t care. Tell me I am being too gloomy!

Obesity linked to 12 cancers

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Obesity plays a role in as many as 12 types of cancer, according to a major analysis of the causes of the disease. The report by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) found that while smoking remains the biggest cause of cancer, it may soon be overtaken by obesity in many countries. In an earlier version of the report, released a decade ago, the WCRF identified seven cancers linked to obesity. Now, it says, the evidence points to 12: liver, ovaries, prostate (advanced), stomach, mouth and throat, bowel, breast (post-menopause), gall bladder, kidney, oesophagus, pancreas and womb. The report says that up to four in ten cancer cases are preventable, and urges non-smokers to adopt a ten-point health plan, which includes cutting down on bacon and processed meats, being physically active and reducing alcohol intake.

One point of view is that, if someone becomes “over-heavy” it is their choice, their (shorter) life, and that it mostly affects poorer people with fewer options. The problem with this viewpoint is that, whether you pay taxes in Britain to support the health service, or you pay healthcare insurance in America, the effect is the same – treating the voluntarily obese puts the cost of health up for everyone, along with their taxes in the UK. And that doesn’t include the cost of bigger ambulances and gear for handling huge bodies. I have grave misgivings about endlessly subsidizing the self-indulgent who don’t or won’t look after themselves or exert a modicum of self-discipline. A daily walk, at the very least, is free. Vegetables won’t kill you. Go on, make an effort!

Thought for the day

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In the 2015-2016 election cycle, the fossil fuel industry in America received over $20 billion in federal subsidies. These subsidies are not only encouraging economic behavior that is decimating our environment but they are putting the welfare of a dying industry above the future of life as we know it.