Back in the saddle again—welcome back to Quick Hits!
This week in Affordable Care Act news: Aetna’s announcement this week that it was pulling out of most of the states where it was serving the Affordable Care Act individual exchanges is a bit of a head-scratcher; after all, just three months earlier, Chief Executive Mark Bertolini was calling its participation in the market “a good investment,” despite near-term losses. And if you’re thinking of making ACA your employer coverage, think again.
And it was a big week for Uber as well: A U.S. judge rejected a $100 million settlement for the company with its drivers. Massachusetts is enacting a new law that takes 5 cents from every Uber, Lyft, etc. ride and puts it toward the improvement of the taxi industry. Volvo, Uber to jointly develop autonomous sport-utility vehicles, as the sharing economy company prepares to start offering self-driving cars in Pittsburgh this month (with challenges of their own)—which will also involve some more data collection than riders might be accustomed to.
- Germany’s conservative interior ministers have released their much-vaunted “Berlin Declaration,” which included plans for a partial ban on full-face veils in public.
- The NSA leak last Monday appears to be real, after some confirmation from Snowden documents.
- It’s not your imagination: Prices are increasing.
- In a semi-unsurprising but still major move, the DOJ announced last week they will be ending the use of private prisons.
- Medical marijuana ‘a start’ to reducing drug crime, says law enforcement group.
- Ryan Lochte’s Olympics robbery story has gotten more and more fishy, and worse and worse for our swimming stars over last week.
- Suing a debt collector? Now they can buy your lawsuit.
- In many courtrooms bad interpreters can mean justice denied.
- Court rules that ISPs do not need to give up information on alleged pirates, copyright infringers.
- Essentially carrying out what Congress ordered, a federal appeals court last Tuesday banned the Justice Department from prosecuting medical marijuana cases if no state laws were broken.
- One of the biggest crime waves in America isn’t what you think it is, says The Week: Employers and their wage theft account for the most theft from U.S. citizens.
- After a federal court struck down the state’s strict voting law as racially discriminatory, Republicans are trying to restrict voting at the county level.
- Court holds bisexual asylum-seeker isn’t actually bisexual, drawing withering dissent.
- U.S. Army fudged its accounts by trillions of dollars, auditor finds.
- A privacy lawsuit over the scanning of Gmail will move forward.
- Last year’s law school graduates landed fewer jobs in private practice than any class in the last two decades, according to the National Association for Law Placement, which tracks developments in the legal profession.
- And finally Gawker.com met its end this week following a long lawsuit. NY Mag has a great (insider’s) look at where Gawker went wrong, or at least fumbled.