RESIST GOVERNMENT USE OF ID.me FOR IDENTITY VERIFICATION

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SUMMARY: Our governments should not be requiring us to provide personal identity information to a private, for-profit company in order to access government programs and information. Yet, that’s what’s happening. It’s a dangerous example of privatization that is redundant and costs taxpayers money, and, in this case, their privacy. I urge you to boycott this if you can and to contact your elected officials to protest. Furthermore, the U.S. needs to better regulate the collection and use of our personal data by the private sector, as Europe has done since 2018.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and see my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

Providing citizens access to government agencies and information is an essential government function. Verifying people’s identity for such access shouldn’t be contracted out to a for-profit company. Yet, that’s what the federal government is doing.

Since 2016, some federal agencies have contracted out identity verification for access to their programs and databases to ID.me. ID.me is a hundred-million-dollar, for-profit company. Recently, Medicare and the U.S. Treasury have been added to the list of ID.me users that includes the IRS, Social Security, and Veterans Affairs (which requires it to access family members’ old military records that are public information). As-of 10/29/26, the U.S. Treasury Department will require use of ID.me to access account information. ID.me has contracts for identity verification with 20 federal agencies, as well as at least 50 state agencies, notably those providing unemployment benefits. [1]

ID.me requires you to provide your date of birth, Social Security number, a photograph of your driver’s license or passport, and a picture of your face taken with your cellphone. This puts a biometric facial recognition image in the hands of a private company with little oversight or control over how it uses the data. ID.me also provides identity verification services to dozens of private companies, including Apple, Amazon, Bank of America, Ford, and JPMorgan Chase. ID.me claims it doesn’t sell data and that it makes its money by charging fees for its services, but I find it hard to believe that it isn’t finding ways to monetize the data it holds on hundreds of millions of Americans.

I urge you to resist by refusing to use ID.me if you can. I also urge you to contact your U.S. Representative and Senators to ask them to block the use of ID.me (or at least the expansion of its use). (You can find contact information for your US Representative at http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ and for your US Senators at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.)

If a login ID and password, along with verification by email, text, or phone message, is secure enough for our access to our bank and other financial accounts, it’s good enough for access to Medicare, Social Security, and other federal data and programs. Furthermore, you can apply for and collect Social Security benefits without going through ID.me and you can sign up for Medicare without it. So, why should it be required to access one’s information at Social Security, Medicare, or the U.S. Treasury? There has been no demonstrated need for this additional security.

Moreover, the U.S. government has its own very similar enhanced security program called Login.gov. So, ID.me is redundant. (Note: I don’t even want to use Login.gov as it puts a biometric facial recognition image in the hands of the Trump regime and I don’t trust how it might use such data.)

ID.me has persuaded government agencies to use its ID verification services through aggressive lobbying and marketing. For its unnecessary services, ID.me has, to date, billed the government (i.e., taxpayers) over $1 billion! ID.me is worse than unnecessary and redundant, it’s another example of privatization taking (stealing?) money from taxpayers. Moreover, once in place, it’s very hard to terminate its use and, eventually, the government may just give in and drop its own capability to perform identity verification. This would mean the end of the historically relatively easy and secure access of citizens to government agencies and programs without giving sensitive personal data to a private entity.

It’s bad enough that for-profit businesses are capturing our personal identity information whenever we interact with them directly. They capitalize on it by using it to tailor their marketing and pricing (aka surveillance pricing; see more here). They also make money by selling our data or sharing it with others. They capture our data through preferred customer and frequent flyer programs, through our activity on social media platforms, through product warranty and purchase registrations, etc.

There should be better government regulation of personal data collection and use by the private sector. For example, regulations should require disclosure of when and what personal data companies are capturing, and how they’re using it. We should have better options for opting out of personal data collection and use, and the ability to require companies to delete our data. Europe has done a much better job than the U.S. of regulating personal data collection and use through its 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It protects individuals when their data is captured and used by private and public entities. There’s a nice overview of it here and more on its legal background here.

What for-profit companies are doing when we interact with them is egregious, but the public sector – our government – should not be abetting the capture, use, and abuse of our personal data by requiring us to provide personal identity information to a for-profit company in order to access government programs and data. However, this is what’s happening with governments’ use of ID.me for login identity verification.

I urge you to contact your U.S. Representative and Senators and ask them to oppose the use of ID.me by the federal government. (See above for links to find contact information for your US Representative and Senators.) You can also contact state officials – your Governor and legislators – and ask them to oppose the use of ID.me at the state level.

For lots of good news see Jess Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water blog’s most recent good news Sunday post here.

[1] Kuttner, R., 10/6/26, “Identity crisis,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2026/10/06/identity-crisis-federal-government-access-id-me/)

ENDING SURPRISE HEALTH CARE BILLING COSTS LOTS OF MONEY

The 2020 No Surprises Act set up an arbitration process so patients didn’t get huge surprise medical bills. The result was profits for corporate capitalists and huge health care costs and waste. Patients pay for this through increased premiums with no improvements in health care quality or outcomes.

SUMMARY: The federal No Surprises Act was passed in 2020 and set up an arbitration process where insurance companies and providers would negotiate the payment for out-of-network charges so patients didn’t get huge surprise bills. What happened is a classic example of how for-profit corporate capitalism creates huge costs and waste in our health care system. Ultimately, patients are paying for all of this through increased premiums, while the cost of our health care system spirals upward with no improvements in quality or outcomes.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and see my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

You probably remember the surprise health care billing problem that made headlines in 2019 and 2020 where patients were getting huge bills for “out-of-network” medical services over which they had no control, such as in the emergency room or for anesthesia or radiology. As a remedy, the federal No Surprises Act was passed in 2020 and set up an arbitration process where insurance companies and providers would negotiate the payment for out-of-network charges, so patients didn’t get huge surprise bills.

Although the Act did succeed in keeping patients from getting surprise bills, what happened is a classic example of 1) how for-profit corporate capitalism dominates and has corrupted our health care system, and 2) how the lack of a single payer system wastes time and money. With a single payer system, the surprise billing problem would never have happened in the first place because there would be no such thing as “out-of-network.”

The arbitration system created to “solve” the surprise bill problem has become another layer of bureaucratic waste. It has created two new sets of middlemen, arbitrators and consultants, who manipulate the system to maximize their own profits on the backs of our already expensive health care system. [1]

The arbitration system primarily has huge insurance companies on one side who want to pay less for medical services. On the other side, in many cases, are private equity-owned medical staffing companies trying to maximize billings and profits. The No Surprises Act instituted an arbitration system using an independent dispute resolution process (IDR).

The in-network rate for medical services is supposed to be used as a guideline for determining payments, but it is not a mandated standard. Policy makers estimated there would be 20,000 arbitration cases a year nationally, based on experience with a similar system that mandated in-network rates as the standard.

However, in 2025 there were 2.2 million arbitration cases and payments were triple those of the previous year. Providers won roughly 85% of the cases and some outrageous payments were made. For example, there were 25 payments for over $10 million each for procedures that had an in-network cost of $100 to $2,000.

One of the new middlemen, the arbitrators get a flat fee per case and took in $1.3 billion. Given their flat rate, they have a perverse incentive to want to stimulate more cases as the only way to increase their revenue. The way to incentivize more cases is to make high payment awards that create an incentive for providers to file more cases. These high payments establish precedents that are cited in subsequent cases, so the payment awards just spiral upward. By the way, five of the certified arbitrators have private equity backers.

The other new middlemen are consultants to providers and their private equity owners. One of these consultant companies, HaloMD, filed 20% of all the arbitration cases and earned over $1 billion in fees in 2025. These consultants, of course, have an incentive to maximize the payment awards and they brag about getting eight to thirteen times the typical in-network payment rate for their clients.

The insurers are fighting back in unusual ways. Across the 2.2 million cases in 2025, in roughly one million cases they simply gave up and defaulted to the providers’ requests. In another 380,000 cases, they offered to pay $1 or less. Clearly, they are not participating in the arbitration system in good faith. It appears their strategy is to fight in court to get cases thrown out en masse rather than having to fight case by case – although the No Surprises Act bans judicial review of individual billing disputes. Or their strategy may be to have the arbitration system spiral so far out of control that the insurers can argue in court that the whole system should be thrown out. A piece of the court-based strategy may be to delay payments. In some cases, providers are reporting that insurers are simply refusing to pay. A trade association for emergency medical services providers has reported that about 60% of awards were not paid within the 30-day period mandated by the No Surprises Act.

Ultimately, patients are paying for all of this – the outrageous payments for the services and the billions of dollars of administrative overhead costs. Individual patients aren’t getting huge surprise bills, rather we are all paying through increased premiums for our health insurance. And the cost of our health care system spirals upward with no improvements in quality or outcomes – just more capitalists making more money. (See this previous post for a more general overview of how capitalism has corrupted our health care system. See this previous post for how a universal, single-payer health care system would save lots of money and lives.)

For lots of good news see Jess Craven’s Chop Wood Carry Water blog’s most recent good news Sunday post here.

[1] Dayen, D., 8/13/26, “Congress face-plants on surprise health care bills,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2026/08/13/congress-trump-no-surprises-act-health-care-bills-insurance/)

THE AFFORDABILITY CRISIS Part 3

The affordability crisis in the U.S. is multifaceted and has been growing for 45 years, due to low pay and high prices. Many factors are pushing up prices well beyond normal inflation, including premiumization of markets, profit-taking middlemen, and the failure to enforce antitrust laws. The Trump administration is doing nothing that affectively addresses the affordability crisis, while many of its actions exacerbate it.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and get notices of my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

My last post discussed profit-taking by middlemen and privatization of public goods and services as drivers of high prices. The previous post presented an overview of the affordability crisis in the U.S., its 45 year history, and discussed monopolistic price gouging, tariffs, and personalized (aka surveillance) pricing as factors leading to high prices.

This post will discuss:

The premiumization of markets, meaning that products and prices target consumers with high incomes.
Efforts to reduce pharmacy benefit managers’ (PBMs) inflation of drug prices.
The failure of the Trump administration to enforce antitrust laws, which allows unjustifiable increase prices by Live Nation / Ticketmaster and others.

The so-called premiumization of markets is happening because high economic inequality leads to consumer spending patterns that make things more expensive for everyone. Consumer spending represents roughly 70% of all economic activity in the U.S. and therefore drives the economy. However, given the high levels of economic inequality, the wealthiest 10% of Americans are now doing almost half of all consumer spending. As a result, retailers target their products and prices to those high-income consumers. Products often become more upscale and their prices go up. Lower priced options tend to disappear, or their prices go up because key consumers can afford to pay more. Sometimes the higher prices are “justified” by adding frills or fancier packaging. Sometimes those with money bid up the price of goods or services with a limited supply, such as housing, raising prices for everyone.

Moreover, the middle class, striving for upward mobility (or at least the appearance of it) and to “keep up with the Joneses,” feels coerced into spending like the top 10%. Fancy clothes and cars, expensive parties and weddings, and so forth are what some feel they need to buy to maintain their status with peers. Easy access to debt, including buy now, pay later (BNPL) plans, facilitate living beyond one’s means. For example, a quarter of BNPL consumers have used BNPL to pay their rent, a third have used it to pay for medical or dental expenses, and nearly 40% have used it to pay off another debt, such as a credit card. [1]

One example of premiumization is the market for workout gyms and health clubs. The market is bifurcating in many locations and the middle-priced facilities are disappearing. The remaining options are the bare bones gym at $15 to $50 a month, which is often quite crowded at peak times, and the upper-end health clubs at over $200 a month, featuring plush locker rooms, personal trainers, and sometimes jacuzzies, saunas, and a spa. [2]

Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) were supposed to reduce drug costs, saving insurers and consumers money, but they have morphed into rapacious profit makers. (See this previous post for more details.) Three huge, monopolistic PBMs (Cigna’s Express Scripts, CVS Health’s Caremark, and United Health’s Optum RX) manage 80% of the prescription drug business in the U.S. It’s estimated that 42 cents of every dollar paid for prescription drugs now goes to a PBM. [3] The spending bill passed by Congress in early February includes an effort to rein in PBMs and reduce drug prices. Starting in 2028, PBMs will be paid a flat fee rather than a percentage of a drug’s price, which will eliminate the incentive to push high-priced drugs even when cheaper alternatives are available. Increased disclosure by PBMs will be required and kickbacks from drug manufacturers will have to be passed back to the PBMs’ customers. [4]

As with the PBMs, other monopolistic middlemen can manipulate the market to make unjustifiably large profits. As this previous post highlighted, Live Nation (parent company of Ticket Master) is a prime example of a monopolistic middleman. [5] It handles the ticket sales for over 80% of the country’s prime concert venues, owns or controls over 330 venues, and manages over 400 top-of-the-line artists. However, the Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) appears to be about to agree to a lenient settlement of the antitrust case against Live Nation. This is happening despite Trump’s executive order in 2025 supposedly cracking down on price gouging for event tickets. And even though 40 state Attorneys General are also parties to the suit against Live Nation / Ticketmaster. Some of them are likely to continue the suit, but the federal settlement will make it harder. By the way, the Federal Trade Commission also sued Live Nation last September for deceptive ticket pricing. [6]

Trump-connected lobbyists have apparently overpowered the DOJ’s own antitrust division and gotten Trump and Attorney General Bondi to overrule the antitrust division once again. As a result, the head of the antitrust division, Gail Slater, resigned a few days after her second in command, Mark Hamer, had resigned. Back in August, the previous number two person, Roger Alford, was fired for resisting sweetheart settlements of antitrust cases. Trump friend, Mike Davis, is the lobbyist for Live Nation and he had previously gotten a $1 million “success fee” for getting the DOJ to drop its challenge to Hewlett Packard’s merger with Juniper Networks. (Several state Attorneys General are challenging the approval of this merger.) He also earned at least $1 million for getting the DOJ to approve the merger of the country’s two largest real estate brokers, Compass and Anywhere Real Estate, over the objections of antitrust division lawyers. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said the settlements of these antitrust cases “looks like corruption. … MAGA-aligned lawyers and lobbyists have been trying to sell off merger approvals … to the highest bidder.” [7]

The Trump administration’s failure to enforce antitrust laws allows monopolistic companies to increase prices, overwhelm small businesses, and put a damper on innovation. Overall, the Trump administration is doing nothing that affectively addresses the affordability crisis, while many of its actions exacerbate it.

My next post will discuss the income side of the affordability crisis and the factors that lead to low pay.

[1] Janssen, E., 12/1/25, “Selling the poor on spending like they’re rich,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2025/12/01/premiumization-plutonomy-middle-class-spending-gilded-age/)

[2] Fonseca, C., & Hecht, B., 2/13/26, “Slimmer pickings on midrange gym options,” The Boston Globe

[3] Curry Wimbish, W., 12/5/25, “Meet the connectors,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2025/12/05/meet-the-connectors-middlemen/)

[4] Abelson, R., & Robbins, R., 2/5/26, “Congress looks to diagnose cause of high drug prices,” The Boston Globe from The New York Times

[5] Dayen, D., 4/30/24, “Live Nation strikes up the band in Washington,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2024/04/30/2024-04-30-live-nation-strikes-up-band-washington/)

[6] Dayen, D., 2/12/26, “Trump Justice Department poised to preserve Ticketmaster monopoly,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2026/02/12/trump-justice-department-ticketmaster-live-nation-monopoly/)

[7] Johnson, J., 2/13/26, “Warren says Trump DOJ ouster of antitrust chief ‘looks like corruption’ as lobbyists, Wall St rejoice,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/warren-gail-slater-antitrust)

THE AFFORDABILITY CRISIS Part 2

Cost of Living Crisis theme done in a Posterised style. Inflation – Economics, cost, shopping basket, supermarket

The affordability crisis (aka cost of living crisis) in the U.S. is multifaceted and has been growing for 45 years, due to low pay and high prices. There are many factors pushing up prices well beyond normal inflation, including profit-taking middlemen and privatization of public goods and services.

(Note: If you find a post too long to read, please just skim the bolded portions. Thanks for reading my blog!)

(Note: Please follow me and get notices of my blog posts on Bluesky at: @jalippitt.bsky.social. Thanks!)

My previous post presented an overview of the affordability crisis (aka cost of living crisis) in the U.S., its 45 year history, and began a discussion of why prices are so high. It covered:

Monopolistic price gouging,
Tariffs, and
Personalized (aka surveillance) pricing driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

This post will discuss:

Profit-taking by middlemen (aka intermediaries) from ticket sellers to drug benefit managers that increases costs for consumers, often unjustifiably and even illegally.
Privatization and the fraud that often accompanies it leave consumers and taxpayers with higher costs and often degraded quality.

Middlemen, also referred to as intermediaries, are entities that operate between consumers and the producers of goods or services. Ostensibly, they make the market operate more efficiently by linking consumers and producers, while making transactions easier and smoother. However, given their need to make a profit, they often end up more focused on profit-making than helping markets operate efficiently. They add a layer of costs to consumers’ purchases, pushing up prices. [1]

Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) are a classic example of middlemen. The original intent was to reduce drug costs, saving insurers and consumers money, but that has morphed into rapacious profit making by manipulating the market and increasing drug costs for consumers. PBMs manage drug benefits for insurance companies and largely determine which drugs are available to insurees and how much they will pay for them. There are three huge, monopolistic PBMs that manage the great majority of drug benefits for private insurers, which is a $600 billion global market. They have found that they can be very profitable by negotiating kickbacks from drug manufacturers (that may be half the cost of a drug) for the drugs they include in an insurer’s formulary, i.e., the list of insured drugs and how much consumers must pay for them. They also sign contracts with pharmacies that tend to reward the big chains and make it very hard for independent pharmacies to exist. It’s estimated that 42 cents of every dollar paid for prescription drugs now goes to a PBM. Meanwhile, the PBM industry spends over $10 million a year lobbying the federal government to block regulation. [2]

As with the PBMs, other monopolistic middlemen often find ways to manipulate the market to make big profits by not only increasing prices for consumers but also lowering the prices they pay to producers. Amazon, once it gained monopolistic control of various e-commerce sectors, has shown itself to be a master at squeezing producers to minimize costs, while also figuring out ways to maximize its revenue from consumers.

Live Nation (parent company of Ticket Master) is another example of a monopolistic middleman. It dominates ticket sales for entertainment events and jacks up prices and adds junk fees to boost its profits. It has increased its monopolistic power by also managing thousands of performers and purchasing many entertainment venues. [3]

Middlemen, from Wall St. asset managers and stock traders to real estate agents, eBay, and the apps that deliver food to your door, add their costs and profits to transactions, thereby increasing prices for consumers. Some have been found to engage in illegal or at least unethical ways to increase their profits.

Meat packers are middlemen that buy meat from ranchers and farmers, process it, and sell it to consumer outlets, e.g., supermarkets. There are four giant meat packers that engage in monopolistic practices, both in the buying and the selling of meat. This, and illegal collusion, has led them to be very profitable as prices for consumers have increased dramatically while the prices they pay to meat producers have fallen. In October 2025, the meatpackers settled two separate price-fixing lawsuits for almost $300 million for illegally jacking up the prices of beef and pork.

As with middlemen, the privatization of goods and services typically delivered by government is presented as a way to make markets more efficient. There are many examples such as privatization of Medicare, roads and bridges with private tolls, and electricity, water, and sewer systems operated by private entities. Often, the profit motive leads to increased costs for consumers and decreased quality of the goods or services delivered.

For example, the federal government has allowed the privatization of the delivery of Medicare health care services to seniors through what are called Medicare Advantage plans. They are run by private insurers and are very profitable because they make it hard to get some health care services (especially expensive ones) and because they cheat the federal government. They cost more than traditional, publicly provided Medicare and deliver worse outcomes. It is estimated that Medicare would save at least $75 billion a year by eliminating Medicare Advantage plans. Because taxpayers pay for Medicare, they are driving up the taxes we all pay for Medicare’s health care. [4] (See this previous post for more detail on the Medicare Advantage rip off.)

Another example is Connecticut’s largest water system, which serves over 200,000 homes and businesses, and is privately owned by Eversource, the large New England utility corporation. It’s asking for a 42% rate increase ($88 million a year) or to allow it to be sold for $2.4 billion to a nonprofit, quasi-public entity. Many experts believe such a sale would lead to higher costs for consumers and weaker regulation. [5] This highlights the complexity and risk of having a public good such as water in private hands.

My next post will discuss the premiumization of markets, meaning that products and prices target consumers with high incomes, and factors that are keeping wages low.

[1] Curry Wimbish, W., 12/5/25, “Meet the connectors,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2025/12/05/meet-the-connectors-middlemen/)

[2] Curry Wimbish, W., 12/5/25, see above

[3] Dayen, D., 4/30/24, “Live Nation strikes up the band in Washington,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/2024/04/30/2024-04-30-live-nation-strikes-up-band-washington/)

[4] Johnson, J., 1/28/26, “A $1.2 trillion ‘rip off’: Report spotlights massive scale of Medicare Advantage fraud,” Common Dreams (https://www.commondreams.org/news/medicare-advantage-fraud)

[5] Associated Press, 12/18/25, “Connecticut’s largest water company seeking 42% rate increase,” The Boston Globe, Business Talking Points