So insurance companies are setting prices arbitrarily. Who has the leverage in this situation?

Insurance companies have the pricing leverage in most situations, partly because in many areas, there is a de facto monopoly. Small doctors offices and even small groups do not have leverage to negotiate prices, so insurance companies dictate fee schedules. Sure you can not accept their insurance, but if there's little competition in the insurance market, that is a death sentence. So the solution is for all the doctors to form a big group with hospitals and drop abusive insurers.

What does this mean? No more small doctors offices. We'll just have large corporate medical systems and large corporate insurers fighting it out. That's the wave of the future and a waste of a lot of money.

There is a form of price control in the ACA, which is 80% of premiums must be used on care, 20% on administrative cost. If providers are paid less than than 80% of premiums collected, the difference must be refunded to the member. So insurers are motivated to bring in lots of premiums and then not pay doctors to avoid eating into their 20%.

FYI, Medicare, the government run insurance company, has administrative costs of 1.4%.

Does the release of this order give all Verizon customers standing to sue the government for unreasonable search? That's one heck of a class action lawsuit.

If you'd like to actually make a difference, email your state assemblymember (and senator when it comes up).

Find Your Rep: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/
Find Their Email: http://clerk.assembly.ca.gov//clerk/memberinformation/memberdir_1.asp

AB1291: The Right to Know Act

Dear Assemblymember,

I am writing you in support of retaining strong privacy safeguards in AB 1291: The Right to Know Act.

I am concerned that large data mining companies and their lobbyists are exerting significant influence over this legislation and individual consumers need strong defenders in our desire to control our own data. For all their protests of the expense of complying with this privacy law, these multinational corporations already have to follow much stricter EU privacy laws.

From the Mercury News: "Consumers who live in 27 countries that belong to the European Union already have the right to know what data companies have on them -- laws that are being complied by Facebook, Google and others that are opposing the California legislation." - http://www.mercurynews.com/politics-government/ci_23067322/silicon-valley-companies-quietly-try-kill-internet-privacy

As mentioned by a former employee in the area: "As a former employee of a business that tracks a huge amount of personal information, I can tell you that most of these companies are already required to keep these records because of EU privacy records. Our databases were literally divided domestic and foreign for this reason.
So while it would take some effort in moving data and changing internal procedures, the bulk of the work is already done for most of these companies."

I hope you are one of us, someone who uses a credit card or spends time online, and want to know what data is being stored about us and how it is being used. Please support strong privacy legislation. Do not be swayed by big money lobbyists.

Thank you,
Me

Because they don't value your work as much as you do. If that's the case, don't do the job. Let someone else do it. What does it matter to you? Go find a client who does value your work as much as you do.

In this case, public officials' salaries are already available BUT you can certainly try to find their past earnings.

If you're serious about making it a public issue, you have to at least contact your politicians.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/ I think would be the best place to go.

Ah, that makes sense. Good find.

ADP knows a lot about people's pay. There should be a law restricting their sharing of data.

It is similar to or part of an NDA. NDAs are applicable beyond the workplace. Companies often consider employee compensation classified information or a trade secret.

In the article, it says HR departments in large companies outsource the handling of INBOUND employment verification checks because those checks take time and energy to perform.

So, they outsource it to Equifax and in some cases give Equifax direct access to [ex-] employees salary information.

So their benefit is it saves them time. Enough time for them to pay Equifax to mine their employees' data.

From the article:
"Companies sign up for The Work Number because it gives them an easy way to outsource employment verification of former workers. Firms hate taking these calls, which usually come when a former employee is applying for a new job, because they are a costly distraction for human resources departments and open the firm up to lawsuits if someone says something disparaging about the former employee. So they contract with The WorkNumber, which automates the process. In exchange, firms upload their human resources data to The Work Number, which was part of an independent St.Louis-based firm named TALX until it was acquired by Equifax in 2007 for $1.4 billion."

Hmmm, this argument sounds familiar: "Don't use centralized policies to enforce good behavior. All it takes is education. It's the parents' fault. Don't restrict me from doing something I want to do."

Like in the real world:
* Education quality varies: not everyone has the resources of a Fortune 500 company
* Even the best education does not necessarily change people's core sensibility: some people are just bad/stupid
* Deterrence is preferable to punishment: it's cheaper to force near universal compliance than to capture, punish, and cleanup after offenders. Costs may be high when you consider possibly valuable information getting to the wrong coworkers, employees, customers, vendors, etc. In a corporate context, the possible punishments all seem too severe for what is essentially a single key press.
* Mistakes happen. Design systems to disallow mistakes: People are human

Sometimes, a central authority has to make policies that restrict people's freedoms for the better of the group. Whether it's mandatory seat belts, air bags, back up cameras, unleaded gas, brake lights, or removal of reply all, protecting society can make sense.

All true, security is not a selling point.

But the reason people don't list it for cell phones is that security is assumed. Similar to if you asked me what I look for in a bank, security is not something I would list. I assume all banks offer adequate security. At least to the level required by law.

What you're pointing out is the average user does not realize/understand how poor the security really is on their devices.

Although, I generally agree with your intuitive sentiment (better pay -> better pool of applicants -> better teachers), there seems to be an inconsistency in your argument (if it's hard to evaluate teachers, then how do we know better pay yields better teachers?).

We still need an evaluation system, even if it's not perfect. Expanding the pool without an evaluation system only bets on marginally increasing the average quality. This, itself, is not an efficient way to improve quality.

Do you know if you can search the contents of a pdf file without a 3rd-party ifilter?

I ask because in Windows 7, you need a 3rd-party ifilter to search the contents of a pdf file. There is no built-in support.