https://goo.gl/vZdajJ 

The burden of high drug costs weighs most heavily on the sickest Americans.

Drug makers have raised prices on treatments for life-threatening or chronic conditions like multiple sclerosis, diabetes and cancer. In turn, insurers have shifted more of those costs onto consumers. Saddled with high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs that expose them to a drug’s rising list price, many people are paying thousands of dollars a month merely to survive.

For more than a year, President Donald Trump and Democrats in Congress have promised to take action on high drug prices, but despite a flurry of proposals, little has changed.

These are the stories of Americans living daily with the reality of high-cost drugs. And there are millions of others just like them.

With an annual income of less than $20,000, Johnson doesn’t come close to being able to afford the 12 medications her doctors have prescribed for congestive heart failure, diabetes and related complications.

She is one of the many who finds herself “in between,” as one of her doctors described it, narrowly missing the requirements for assistance but making too little to afford her prescriptions.

Here’s a rundown of the math: Johnson’s Social Security disability income of $19,560 in 2017 placed her above the cutoff for receiving additional government assistance for her prescriptions, called Extra Help, even though nearly every dollar of her income is already spoken for, from paying Medicare premiums to food and other household expenses.

https://goo.gl/wYvF2F

The U.S. Department of Justice has yet to release long-promised clarifications on the Americans with Disabilities Act that would help judges handle lawsuits that claim businesses’ websites are not handicap-accessible - and the blame isn't on just one of the country's last two, very different presidents.

“The DOJ, under both the Obama and Trump administrations, is responsible for the onslaught of these lawsuits,” says Minh Vu, a Seyfarth Shaw attorney who specializes in such lawsuits.

First announced in 2010, the DOJ was eventually expected to release much-anticipated clarifications in 2016 to the Americans with Disabilities Act Title III, but pushed the release date to 2018. The law originated in the 1990s before the internet was so widely used and only mentions businesses' brick-and-mortar locations.

Regulations that would have helped businesses determine whether their websites are ADA-compliant aren't coming from the DOJ, though. Late last year, it chose to withdraw proposed rules, likely creating a patchwork of decisions from judges that will confuse businesses facing these lawsuits.

In just a few months, 2018 has continued to see the onslaught of ADA Title III lawsuits that 2017 saw. The lawsuits brought by plaintiffs against retailers claim the businesses violate the ADA by not having handicap-accessible websites. Cases are brought by both deaf and blind plaintiffs.

Without any rules set, Vu stated “the number of website accessibility lawsuits is not likely to go down for at least a few years."

Seyfarth Shaw's research found that more than 800 lawsuits were filed in 2017 over allegedly inaccessible websites.

CripTheVote: Midterm Elections Preview

On March 4, 2018, the co-partners of #CripTheVote hosted a Twitter chat looking ahead to the midterm elections in 2018. Here is a sampling of the conversation. Questions listed first.

https://goo.gl/orr4at 

“I was not satisfied with covering low-income communities for a higher-income audience. I wanted to cover issues for and with low-income news consumers.”

If you received an unsolicited text message about a free service offering to check the public record of your house or landlord, would you respond?

What if you were a renter without much money and debating whether you should withhold next month’s rent because needed repairs aren’t being done? Or if the house next door is unmaintained and affecting your own living situation?

For many Detroit residents, replying to that sort of out-of-the-blue text might be worth a shot. When I first texted the service of Outlier Media, within a minute I was informed about what it does, how I could use it, and (after a prompt to send an address) that the Outlier database didn’t have records on the building I was interested in (the Motown Museum). Seconds later, Outlier had asked me if I needed more information about housing, inspections, or utility shutoffs. And though I didn’t ask for a follow-up, 51 minutes later Sarah Alvarez, the founder and lead reporter on Outlier, had answered my query manually. (The museum’s address has $1,249.24 in taxes due from 2016 but is not on the tax auction list, I’m told.)

Check out https://outliermedia.org/

https://goo.gl/Do5GfR

Disability rights organizations have long criticized Uber and its ride-hailing application for failing to serve people with disabilities and wheelchair users. To stem the onslaught of activists and the press, the company rolled out a wheelchair accessible uberWAV service in 2015.

The following year, I wrote an article that exposed UberWAV for what it actually was - a scam. Long story short: the original UberWAV acted as an intermediary between wheelchair users and the accessible taxis that already existed from providers like Yellow Cab. Worse yet: the cost of UberWAV was the standard taxi meter fare, plus a booking fee. This meant wheelchair users would end up paying more for a Yellow Cab wheelchair taxi booked through Uber than they would ordering the taxi directly from Yellow Cab. None of the savings offered to able-bodied Uber riders were given to people with disabilities. It was shameful, a scam and definitely illegal.

Fast-forward a year and things have improved dramatically for the better. Uber is out with a reboot of the UberWAV platform in a handful of cities. Brand-new fleets of rear-entry wheelchair accessible minivans have been purchased and leased to drivers who are trained to assist riders with disabilities. In some markets, drivers receive performance credits to offset the cost of leasing the ADA vans, making it a win-win for riders and drivers alike.

I recently tested out the new UberWAV in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area. I requested rides via the Uber mobile app (selecting the UberWAV vehicle type) in under a minute. The fare structure for the ADA accessible UberWAV is the same as Uber X (for able-bodied riders). The application will show you the fare estimate prior to booking.

After requesting a ride, it took a few minutes for a driver to accept the call. On both of my UberWAV rides in the D.C. area, the driver was busy completing a ride nearby. This added to my wait times, which were roughly 25 and 20 minutes from the time I requested the ride.