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Tag: propublica

  • DOJ Reviewing Intuit’s Credit Karma Deal

    DOJ Reviewing Intuit’s Credit Karma Deal

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) is reviewing Intuit’s recent attempt to acquire Credit Karma over anticompetitive concerns.

    Intuit moved to purchase Credit Karma for roughly $7 billion in cash and stocks. While the deal appears to join two complimentary services on the surface, almost immediately it came under scrutiny over concerns Intuit was merely trying to eliminate a competitor. While Credit Karma is primarily known for helping individuals monitor and improve their credit score, it had launched a free tax preparation service in 2017.

    ProPublica is reporting the concerns were valid enough to warrant the DOJ’s attention. In particular, Credit Karma’s innovative approach to tax preparation threatened to upend the whole market. In a company memo ProPublica obtained that outlined Intuit’s legal strategy, it appears the government is looking at “the influence that Intuit’s purchase of Credit Karma will have on consumer tax preparation platforms and [the] software market.”

    Once Credit Karma and Intuit respond to the government’s request for information, the DOJ will decide what to do. While it’s too early to tell which way the DOJ will rule, given the government’s renewed interest in anticompetitive behavior in the tech industry, Intuit’s deal may face significant hurdles.

  • Yelp Teams With ProPublica On Heath Care Info For Business Pages

    Yelp announced a new partnership with ProPublica to add health care stats and consumer opinion survey data to Yelp businesses pages for over 25,000 medical treatment facilities.

    The information being used was compiled by ProPublica as well as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). It covers 4,600 hospitals, 15,000 nursing homes, and 6,300 dialysis clinics in the U.S. The data will be updated every quarter.

    Users will see hover text on the business page that explains the stats. It will also show numbers of “serious deficiencies and fines per nursing home and emergency room wait times for hospitals.”

    yelp

    Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman writes on the Yelp blog:

    For example, West Kendall Baptist Hospital has better than average doctor communication and an average 33 minute ER wait time, Beachside Nursing Center currently has no deficiencies, and San Mateo Dialysis Center has a better than average patient survival rate.

    Now the millions of consumers who use Yelp to find and evaluate everything from restaurants to retail will have even more information at their fingertips when they are in the midst of the most critical life decisions, like which hospital to choose for a sick child or which nursing home will provide the best care for aging parents.

    Two years ago, Yelp started showing health scores on restaurant listings in San Francisco and New York City. In the meantime it has begun doing so in other areas as various municipalities have adopted the system. Last year, it was actually able to help health officials in New York find hundreds of cases of food borne illness. Early this year, Yelp formed an open data partnership with Socrata to distribute restaurant inspection information.

    Yelp is calling all of this stuff along with its ongoing consumer alerts its “Consumer Protection Initiative,” and said it has “much more” planed. This includes more restaurant health scores and more work with ProPublica on other categories of information.

    Earlier this week, Yelp revealed its new small business council, which consists of a group of small business who have been picked to represent businesses in their regions.

    Image via Yelp (Flickr)

  • Obamacare’s Medicare Part D Disparities

    According to new information from U.S. News and World Report, the Affordable Care Act Medicare Part D is feasible, but extremely “wasteful.”

    This information comes after months of problems with Obamacare, including the failures of the ACA website.

    On Tuesday, the CMS reported that the new plan is saving senior citizens billions of dollars, but ProPublica, an investigative journalism organization says that these “savings” are not substantive, and are actually costing consumers billions of dollars.

    The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that the result of Medicare Part D under Obamacare will allow seniors to utilize social security benefits as they wish, instead of on expensive prescriptions. The idea of one of the major changes made to the healthcare law is to cut down, and eventually terminate, the “donut hole” that seniors are now falling into.

    The “donut hole,” according Laurie Tarkan, the executive director of WellBeeFile.com is a result of Medicare recipients’ obligation to pay full price for their medications and prescriptions on their own for a period of time. When a certain point known as “catastrophic drug coverage,” has been met, the government will then resume assistance.

    The waste that has been taking place through Medicare Part D, according to experts, are the result of certain provisions which allow beneficiaries a largely varied amount of aid based on different parts of the country.

    For example, the benefits allotted to low income beneficiaries grants these beneficiaries the right to pay only $7 per prescription, no matter the actual market price of the drug.

    Many inconsistencies have also been found in the amount of assistance that is given to patients who have been released from a hospital, reside in a nursing home, or require in-home care.

    According to the Washington Post, the gaps in coverage allotted by state or area are astronomical. According to their report, a patient requiring home care in New Jersey receives an estimated $3,800, while their Louisiana counterpart receives $8,800.

    In Chicago, 1 out of every 4 Medicare patients receive further assistance after a hospital stay, more than three-times what Phoenix beneficiaries receive, to be exact.

    Main image courtesy njnewsfeed via YouTube.

  • Foursquare Integrates School Stats from ProPublica

    Foursquare has been getting better over the past year or so by adding more information to check-ins. Their list of connected apps has grown to include some pretty useful apps like GeoPollster, which will tell you if the business you just checked-in at supports Democrats, Independent, or Republican candidates with their campaign contributions. Or After Credits, an app that I particularly like which tells you whether or not you need to stay for any bonus scenes after the movie you just checked-into.

    Today, Foursquare is announcing a new connected app – ProPublica’s Opportunity Gap.

    When you check into a school, the app will give you a fact about the school: facts like “did you know 7% of students at PS 234 Independence School receive free or reduced lunch?”

    You can then click through to access a more-detailed set of statistics like the number of students, teachers, AP courses offered, “inexperienced teachers,” and more.

    “With their new Foursquare integration, you can connect your Foursquare account to instantly see statistics for schools you’ve checked in to before. And when you’re out, you can instantly get stats about a school on your phone whenever you check in to one. It’s a great example of how news organizations can use Foursquare to reach their readers with relevant information when they’re out in the real world,” says Foursquare.

    “A year ago when we launched the first version of our “Opportunity Gap” news application, we tightly integrated Facebook in order to make it easy for readers to compare schools and share their school comparisons. Today’s relaunch adds Foursquare, along with adding a slew of new data to the app as well as algorithmically generate narratives by Narrative Science,” says ProPublica.

    Data should be available for around 50,000 schools, they say.

    You can connect your Foursquare account to the app and start receiving school info by going here.