June 2015

On June 23, James Dolan’s cable company, Cablevision, finally answers allegations that it strong-armed employees during a bruising, three-year tangle with the communication workers’ union. James L. Dolan is not a man to dodge a fight. When the billionaire owner of the New York Knicks and Rangers received an emotional e-mail from a lifelong fan begging him to sell his hapless basketball team, for example, Dolan told 72-year-old Irving Bierman that he was a “hateful mess” and an “alcoholic maybe.” But tiffs like these are nothing compared to the bruising three-year war of attrition that Dolan and Cablevision, the multibillion-dollar cable company he runs, have fought with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union that some employees voted to join in 2012.

Allegations of misconduct have been hurled at both sides. In recent months, regional offices of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that supervises union elections and investigates unfair labor practices, has accused Dolan and Cablevision of violating federal labor law by allegedly threatening employees, bargaining in bad faith, unfairly firing employees, and raising the salaries only of non-union workers. In a statement, a Cablevision spokesman responded: “This is a ridiculous and false attack which is not worthy of either a response or any attention from readers.” A contract between CWA was finally signed, only hours before tipoff at the February 13 NBA All-Star Game, hosted at Dolan’s Madison Square Garden. But the scars from the long, expensive fight remain raw.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission adopted a proposal that, according to the agency, takes “significant steps to modernize its Lifeline program.” Lifeline is a 30 year-old telecommunications subsidy program for low-income households. After 30 years, you would think that the program has made a demonstrable impact on making “phone service affordable for low-income Americans,” as the FCC put it. You would be wrong.

As I think most American’s would agree, the FCC is right for caring about the poor, but the agency’s plan doesn’t put that care into action. Despite FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s statements to the contrary, this isn’t a partisan issue. It’s an evidence issue. Why does Lifeline make no impact? The poor purchase service without the subsidy. In my home state of Florida, for example, in 2005, under the original program, about 90 percent of low-income households had telephone service, but less than 20 percent participated in Lifeline. One study found that people signing up for the subsidy almost always already had phone service. Why were poor households abandoning landlines and ignoring Lifeline? People participating in the study said they moved often, which meant costly connection fees. They also said cellular phones are more convenient and that it is easier to control access to cellular phones. What should the FCC do? Devote more radio spectrum resources to broadband. Poor customers have shown themselves to be just as talented as others in determining what communications services best fit their needs, and they are taking advantage of dynamic competitive markets just like everyone else. The primary need of these markets is more radio spectrum. This is particularly true for the poor since they have demonstrated a preference for mobile devices.

[Mark Jamison is the Director and Gunter Professor of the Public Utility Research Center at the University of Florida]

As part of a series about technology in prisons called "Jailbreak," we're talking about the growing use of video visitation in prisons. It's being used already in over 500 institutions around the country. Most of them are county jails, but a few are state prisons. And while we know a lot about the impact of in-person visits between inmates and their families while incarcerated, we don't know much about the impact of video visitation.

Bernadette Rabuy, a policy and communications associate at the Prison Policy Initiative, says the growth in popularity of video visitation technology has a lot to do with cutting costs. Prisons are also attracted to the fact that it eliminates the opportunity for the smuggling of contraband items to prisoners. But Rabuy cautions that the benefits may not outweigh the emotional costs: "We don't know that these videos are equivalent to in-person visits, which have been shown by a lot of research to be one of the only ways we know for sure reduces the likelihood of future crimes."

Nearly 20 years after such videoconferencing technology has been available for health services, fewer than 1 percent of Medicare beneficiaries use it. Anthem and a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center health plan in western Pennsylvania are the only two Medicare Advantage insurers offering the virtual visits, and the traditional Medicare program has tightly limited telemedicine payments to certain rural areas. And even there, the beneficiary must already be at a clinic, a rule that often defeats the goal of making care more convenient. Congress has maintained such restrictions out of concern that the service might increase Medicare expenses.

The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts have said giving seniors access to doctors online will encourage them to use more services, not replace costly visits to emergency rooms and urgent care centers. In 2012, the latest year for which data are available, Medicare paid about $5 million for telemedicine services -- barely a blip compared with the program’s total spending of $466 billion, according to a study in the journal Telemedicine. But the telemedicine industry says letting more beneficiaries get care online would reduce doctor visits and emergency care. Industry officials as well as the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and other health experts say it’s time for Congress to expand use of telemedicine in Medicare.