Wednesday August 29, 2001
See Your State’s SAT scores
The College Board released average SAT scores from the states Tuesday (8/28), but warned journalists not to try to use the scores to rank the states. Instead, the examination board listed the states by the percentage of students that took the test. “It illustrates what we have been trying to tell reporters, that your participation rate is a major factor in your SAT scores,” said Janice Gams, a College Board spokesperson. full story
Where Did All The Tobacco Settlement Money Go?
The Los Angeles Times reported this week: “Tobacco companies, under court order to reimburse states for the expense of treating smoking-related illness, have paid out more than $21 billion so far. But less than half of it has gone to fund health care. And only 5% has been used to help Americans kick the cigarette habit.
Instead, lawmakers in state after cash-strapped state have tapped the money for needs deemed more pressing: college scholarships in Michigan, new schools in Ohio, flood-control projects in North Dakota. Illinois used part of its money to give a tax rebate last year. Tennessee is spending every penny of its bounty to plug a budget gap. The trend alarms health care experts who say most states should be spending three to four times as much on anti-smoking campaigns if they hope to bring future tobacco-related medical costs under control. And it depresses those who fought a legal battle for years to get the settlement, only to see the funds, in their eyes, squandered.”
What has your state done?
Business Debit Cards Not Protected
Here’s a new one. The Boston Globe reports: “Debit cards look and perform pretty much the same, but to his horror George T. Farley Jr. discovered the debit card issued to his small business had a key difference: It offered no protection in case of theft. Farley’s business debit card was stolen last year while he was working out at a gym in Dedham. The thief over the next few days made nearly $20,000 in purchases at three appliance stores. Farley reported the theft as soon as he learned of it, but it was too late. The money was gone. The Westwood resident had assumed his MasterMoney Business Card from Citizens Bank carried the same protections as any consumer debit card, with losses in most cases limited to $50. But he discovered business debit cards offer no liability protection.
Under federal banking regulations, individual consumers who report a stolen debit card within two days of learning of the theft are liable for only $50 in losses. Those who wait longer to report the loss of a card have their liability capped at $500. In many cases, Visa and MasterCard have reduced a consumer’s liability to zero. But business cardholders do not have similar protections. In effect, they run the risk of seeing their entire bank account wiped out if they don’t report a card theft immediately and have the card turned off.”
Doctors Give Opinions Online
Several Morning Meeting readers sent me follow-ups to my earlier tip about doctors who are consulting with their patients by e-mail and are charging for it. In fact, insurance companies are starting to reimburse for e-calls. Now, some hospitals are offering to give “second opinions” via the Internet without ever seeing the patients.
See this story: “The Harvard teaching hospitals, where doctors are rated among the best nationally for their expertise in cancer, heart disease, rheumatology, and other medical specialties, this summer launched a service to sell second opinions in 27 states for $600 per case.”
The Globe says: “Specialists will review a patient’s history and test results for his primary care doctor online but won’t examine the patient personally. Legal restrictions on practicing medicine across state lines and disagreement over whether it’s beneficial for physicians to offer detailed opinions without actually seeing patients have kept many major medical centers from jumping into online consulting. But a few – including the Boston hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, which plans to provide online second opinions by the end of the year – are so crowded with very sick patients that they must find ways to expand services for serious illnesses without necessarily bringing more people into the hospitals.”
Energy Surcharges
You might remember a previous rant here about energy surcharges in places where power rates were not going up, in fact in some states they can’t go up by law. Attorney General’s in New Jersey and Florida opened investigations.
Here’s a follow-up. Morning Meeting reader Jamie Schmidt was good enough to send me this alert about Pennsylvania and New Jersey hotels which have joined others in adding those annoying energy surcharges despite the fact their power bills are not rising.
Here is a story from Philly.com. ” It started at a handful of hotels in San Diego last year, just as electricity prices in the Golden State started to rise. But energy surcharges have now reached Philadelphia-area hotels. And other businesses, such as restaurants and exterminators, have jumped on the bandwagon. Some experts say conditions here don’t merit the fees. Gasoline prices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey have declined this year. Electricity rates in both states have increased, but not nearly as much as in California. “These are temporary charges, put in to partially recoup the large increases in the cost of energy we have experienced,” Roger Conner, a spokesman for Marriott International, said last month. Customers are notified of the charges by signs at the front desk and when they make reservations, he added. “We will start removing them very shortly, as soon as energy prices start to go down.”
Want to know how people feel about this? Check this bulletin board conversation.
Payphone Use Way Down
I noticed a little announcement on the business wires that BellSouth is getting out of the payphone business ASAP. They say that payphone use is way down because of cellular and wireless.
It might be an interesting story to see where people need payphones. Ask the phone company where the busiest payphones are in your community.
A whole generation is growing up that has no experience with payphones. They did not know a time before cell phones.
