Today, at 2pm the Economic Matters Committee of the Maryland House of Delegates will hold a hearing to consider H.B. 131, which would ban non-disparagement clauses in consumer contracts. Like the parallel California law enacted in 2014, H.B. 131 has a laudably strong enforcement provision: both private individuals and state authorities are able to take action, via […]
Author Archives: Scott Michelman
Detected in a number of returning travelers in the U.S. over the past month, the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus is rampant in Brazil, present in a number of Central American countries, and linked to birth defects in babies. The W.H.O. has declared it a world health emergency. Read key facts about the disease here from the CDC. The CDC has […]
The Massachusetts attorney general is looking into whether Gilead Sciences violated state consumer protection laws in its drug pricing. One of the drugs in question, Solvadi, costs $84,000 for a 12-week course of treatment. The median income for a United States household in 2014 was around $53,000. Also last week, the nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation, filed a […]
As Iowans prepare to begin the process of selecting the parties' nominees for president, a Vox piece over the weekend theorizes that the attraction many voters feel to "outsider" candidates of both parties this cycle is based on a sense that the prevailing approach to economic issues in this country — which has brought us deregulation, […]
It's "Almost Pizza"! Watch it here.
The Feb. 8 issue of Forbes alerts readers to a strange and troubling new phenomenon: litigation investing. Companies like Mighty provide "investors" (more accurately: gamblers? loan sharks?) the opportunity to make loans to plaintiffs to help them while their lawsuit is pending, with repayment contingent on success. Some problems: First, interest rates are predatory — […]
Stanford researchers are trying to test whether the use of algorithms on health data could improve the way we screen for certain genetic diseases. The implications are concerning for privacy but exciting for disease prevention. And the current test has some privacy protections built in, as FiveThirtyEight explains: The researchers plan "to flag doctors who […]
This bipartisan bill to bar the use of "gag clauses" (or "non-disparagement clauses") in consumer contracts passed the Senate last month and awaits action in the House. Read today's Thune/Issa op-ed in the Huffington Post. Read prior coverage on our blog here and here.
…is the subtitle of a damning report issued last week by the Center for Effective Government. The report (full title: "Living in the Shadow of Danger: Poverty, Race, and Unequal Chemical Facility Hazards") finds "compelling evidence that increasing social inequality is linked to environmental degradation and that the health of people of color and those living in […]