Ken Chan

Last week, The New York Times published Arriving as Pregnant Tourists, Leaving with American Babies, a report that offered an interesting peek at a San Gabriel maternity center that catered to pregnant mothers from China. While the article focused on the immigration law aspects of this practice, I wanted to delve into some other issues that were not covered.

Medical Tourism

Medical tourism, or the practice of securing medical services in another state or country, is a serious business. Major American hospitals, including Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Cleveland Clinic, Stanford, UCSF, Duke, and Massachusetts General Hospital, have programs dedicated to international patients seeking state-of-the-art care. Some hospitals even have dedicated maternity services for international patients. These programs offer hospitals an avenue to expand their revenue base by serving patients willing to pay full hospital costs by themselves. In an era of diminished public funding and renewed threats to Medicare, these premium paying patients may well end up subsidizing the cost of care for many of us.

Bless her heart. This month, Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) introduced the Retirement Security for Today’s Four-Year-Olds Act of 2011, which seeks to curb the next generation’s sense of entitlement. This bill seeks to change the definition of retirement age under the Social Security Act to 70, as of January 1, 2069. The title is a bit misleading since it affects more than today’s four-year-olds. People turning 70 in 2069 were born in 1999, meaning they will be turning 12 this year. Yes, another grievance for today’s pre-teens to add to the long list of injustices that have befallen them. I’m sure Dick Clark will be long gone come New Year 2069, so as the New Year’s Eve Ball descends down on Times Square, he should be spared the collective whine: I want to retire and I want it now!

Last week, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker fired the shot heard ’round the world by signing a bill that limited the rights of most municipal and state employees to engage in collective bargaining. The bill does exempt public safety employees, including police officers, fire fighters, deputy sheriffs, state probation and parole officers, and persons that provide combined police and fire protection services, from the restrictions mandated by the bill. Interestingly, I did not spot an exemption for correctional workers.

While the Great Recession had many fathers (and mothers), I don’t believe that public sector unions were one of them. Nevertheless, when the government needs to ratchet down its expenses to match its diminished revenues, government workers stand out as an obvious target (and solution). Admittedly, when times are good, unions have no impetus to offer concessions of any kind. So, if Wisconsin or other states intend to rebalance its books on the back of public employees, now is the time when the unions recognize that they have to bear part of the burden as well.

I am dedicating this episode of Congressional Haiku to Representative Cliff Stearns (R-FL).

Interwebs awake

From winter dreams. Dot.gov links,

PageRank blossoms.

Washington is no stranger to political gridlock. And, we expect a certain amount of intransigence when Republicans and Democrats coalesce. But, in a shocking act of all that’s wrong in the Capital City, Congress may be stepping in to compel one government website to link to another. Of course, the surprise is that both websites are presumably run by the same organization–the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.

Last month, the Black Economic Council, Latino Business Chamber of Greater Los Angeles and National Asian American Coalition staged a protest at Google, demanding data on the racial make-up of its employees.

The specific dataset sought by the protesters was the EEO-1 Report, which is filed by all employers with 100 or more employees or certain federal government contractors with 50 or more employees. This report collects the race/ethnic, gender and job categories of employees, and is confidential. The EEOC estimates that this reporting requirement impacts about 45,000 private employers and imposes “599,000 burden hours,” costing respondents $11.4 million and the federal government another $2.1 million–that’s bureaucratese for time and money sink.

Amazon is no stranger to tax disputes. Thus far, the typical tax claim concerning the online retail goliath involves its obligation to collect sales taxes. Several states have contended that the presence of Amazon Associates within its borders was sufficient to meet the substantial nexus mandated by the Commerce Clause in order for a state to require that a retailer collect sales taxes for purchases by residents within the state. Amazon usually “fixes” that problem by terminating its Associates in the complaining state.

The Justia Dockets & Filings website offers attorneys, journalists, litigants, and legal researchers a simple tool for discovering and tracking litigation in the various federal courts. I find the website to be absolutely indispensable for tracking who is suing and who is being sued.

For example, I subscribe to the following RSS feeds to track lawsuits involving technology companies, such as Google, Facebook and Apple. You will find a routine stream of complaints over privacy, patents and petty consumer grievances. For the latter group, I sometimes wonder about the plaintiffs who cannot resolve minor disputes without resorting to a federal class action. In this day and age of increasing transparency in the legal system, are these plaintiffs giving sufficient forethought to how a potential future employer may view their degree of litigiousness over seemingly trivial disputes?

The age-old investment adage “buy low, sell high” must be giving the political class a bad case of buyer’s remorse. Considering how much our nation has paid in blood and treasure to topple Saddam Hussein, Iraq may well end up being the world’s largest underwater investment ever. Worse yet, when our mission is truly accomplished, the Iraqis will repossess their nation, leaving us with our outstanding bills as souvenirs of our own folly. If only we were as savvy as those Tunisians and Egyptians, who accomplished the same for pennies on the dollar.

Maybe instead of calling for the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, our politicians should be awarding him a Congressional Gold Medal or the Presidential Medal of Freedom for following President George W. Bush’s clarion call to expand “freedom in all the world.” In terms of exposing “the pretensions of tyrants,” WikiLeaks has achieved that in spades.

On Monday, Gabriel Saldana offered some social media privacy tips for stalking victims. His advice about quitting Facebook is on the mark, and not just for people victimized by stalkers. While Facebook is a popular gateway into a virtual world of friends, status updates, and likes, it may also serve as a social engineering Trojan horse for those seeking to do you harm.

Consider the following security questions that banks and other financial institutions often use to safeguard your account?

January 3rd, 2011 marked the start of the 112th United States Congress, which shifted control of the House of Representatives to the Red Republicans. In a moment that harkened back to a prior Red Revolution, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) promptly introduced legislation seeking to end the reign of the Tsar.

In all seriousness, the true focus of the Republicans is H.R. 2, also known as the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. But, if truth be told, the real job killer is not the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which President Obama signed on March 23, 2010. Just look at the Unemployment Rate Chart, which I have created with help from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.