The accidents … Lots of helo crashes lately …

https://www.rotorandwing.com/2018/07/12/recent-us-crashes-prompt-safety-reminders-ushst/

Rash of Fatal Crashes Prompts Broad Warning By Helicopter Safety Advocates

By Amy Kluber | July 12, 2018

Sunday's helicopter crash in Williamsburg, Virginia, marked the latest incident in what the U.S. Helicopter Safety Team (USHST) is calling "the worst 10-day stretch of fatal accidents [in the U.S.] since late 2012." It's now calling on the helicopter community to remember important safeguards before flying.

In an open letter to the U.S. helicopter community distributed Thursday, the team refers to the four fatal accidents that occurred from June 29 to July 8 in Texas, Puerto Rico, Indiana and Virginia. Each caused one fatality.

"Within the 50 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico, four fatal helicopter accidents and four fatalities occurred from June 29 to July 8, 2018, a pace of nearly one fatal accident every other day," the letter reads. "Investigations take time, so the underlying cause of each case will not be known for some time. However, there is one thing we know with certainty. None of the individuals involved in these tragic events woke up that morning thinking this would be their last helicopter flight. The series of fatal helicopter accidents is a reminder to our community. There is sometimes a fine line between a flight that ends uneventfully and one that ends disastrously."

The team noted a similar trend in 2012 in which five fatal helicopter accidents occurred in California, Texas, Florida, Michigan and Illinois from Nov. 25 to Dec. 10.

The letter lists five reminders for flying helicopters: review basic procedures, think through what actions you would take for various emergencies, consider how summer temperatures affect performance and aircraft limitations, consider factors that may build up cumulative fatigue and practice real-time risk management.

"As a community, let's all do our part to ensure the 10-day surge in fatal helicopter accidents is an anomaly and does not stretch into a long-term trend," the letter concluded.

In the most recent accident last weekend, a Robinson Helicopter R44 crashed into an apartment building in Williamsburg, Virginia. The pilot and one apartment resident were killed.

Social media, big data, privacy, and your health insurance. Maybe the Europeans have a fix? "Europe … passed a strict law called the General Data Protection Regulation, which went into effect in May. In Europe, data protection is a constitutional right." Long article [excerpted below], but eye-opening description of what THEY have on you.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/practicemanagement/informationtechnology/74064

'Social Determinants of Health' Draw Insurers' Interest

—Sucking up data on customers' buying and social habits – but for what purpose?

by Marshall Allen, ProPublica

July 17, 2018

… With little public scrutiny, the health insurance industry has joined forces with data brokers to vacuum up personal details about hundreds of millions of Americans, including, odds are, many readers of this story. The companies are tracking your race, education level, TV habits, marital status, net worth. They're collecting what you post on social media, whether you're behind on your bills, what you order online. Then they feed this information into complicated computer algorithms that spit out predictions about how much your health care could cost them. …

Insurers contend they use the information to spot health issues in their clients – and flag them so they get services they need. And companies like LexisNexis say the data shouldn't be used to set prices. But as a research scientist from one company told me: "I can't say it hasn't happened."

At a time when every week brings a new privacy scandal and worries abound about the misuse of personal information, patient advocates and privacy scholars say the insurance industry's data gathering runs counter to its touted, and federally required, allegiance to patients' medical privacy. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, only protects medical information. …

Patient advocates warn that using unverified, error-prone "lifestyle" data to make medical assumptions could lead insurers to improperly price plans – for instance raising rates based on false information – or discriminate against anyone tagged as high cost. And, they say, the use of the data raises thorny questions that should be debated publicly, such as: Should a person's rates be raised because algorithms say they are more likely to run up medical bills? Such questions would be moot in Europe, where a strict law took effect in May that bans trading in personal data. …

To understand the scope of what they were offering, consider Optum. The company, owned by the massive UnitedHealth Group, has collected the medical diagnoses, tests, prescriptions, costs, and socioeconomic data of 150 million Americans going back to 1993, according to its marketing materials. (UnitedHealth Group provides financial support to NPR.) The company says it uses the information to link patients' medical outcomes and costs to details like their level of education, net worth, family structure and race. An Optum spokesman said the socioeconomic data is de-identified and is not used for pricing health plans.

Optum's marketing materials also boast that it now has access to even more. In 2016, the company filed a patent application to gather what people share on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and link this material to the person's clinical and payment information. A company spokesman said in an email that the patent application never went anywhere. But the company's current marketing materials say it combines claims and clinical information with social media interactions. ….

LexisNexis … said it uses 442 non-medical personal attributes to predict a person's medical costs. Its cache includes more than 78 billion records from more than 10,000 public and proprietary sources, including people's cellphone numbers, criminal records, bankruptcies, property records, neighborhood safety and more. The information is used to predict patients' health risks and costs in eight areas, including how often they are likely to visit emergency rooms, their total cost, their pharmacy costs, their motivation to stay healthy and their stress levels.

People who downsize their homes tend to have higher healthcare costs, the company says. As do those whose parents didn't finish high school. Patients who own more valuable homes are less likely to land back in the hospital within 30 days of their discharge. The company says it has validated its scores against insurance claims and clinical data. But it won't share its methods and hasn't published the work in peer-reviewed journals. …