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Finally, a Law That Says Take It Down.

For too long, victims of digital exploitation, especially those whose images were shared without their consent, have been told to simply deal with it. To live with the shame, the trauma, and the often life-altering consequences of something they never agreed to share. The pain was dismissed, the platforms were silent, and the damage was permanent.

Not anymore.

In a rare and welcome show of bipartisanship, President Trump has signed the “Take It Down Act” into law, marking a turning point in the fight to protect people from digital exploitation. While the headlines might skim the surface, the impact of this law runs deep and it’s about time.

Why This Matters

This law addresses a dark and often overlooked corner of the internet, that being the non-consensual sharing of intimate images and other forms of digital abuse. These are not isolated incidents. They are widespread, damaging, and have been largely ignored by legislation and tech platforms alike, until now.

Victims of digital exploitation often face an impossible battle. Once something is online, it spreads fast and lives forever. The legal recourse has been murky, the reporting process inconsistent, and the emotional toll immeasurable. Careers have been destroyed. Relationships have been lost. Reputations have been irreparably damaged.

This isn’t just about privacy, it’s about human dignity.

What the Law Does

The Take It Down Act aims to hold platforms accountable and provide a pathway for victims to have harmful content removed swiftly and without the burden of navigating a confusing system. It empowers individuals who have been exploited to say “enough” and be heard.

Just as importantly, it sends a message: We see you. We believe you. We’re doing something about it.

A Cultural Shift, Too

The law itself is a huge step, but it also signals something larger and that is a cultural shift in how we treat digital spaces and the people who navigate them. This law won’t fix everything, but it cracks the door open to further protections, better education, and ideally, a future where consent and respect aren’t optional in online interactions.

What You Can Do

If you’ve ever shared something online, this applies to you. If you’ve ever posted a photo, forwarded a video, or commented on someone else’s life, this law is a reminder that behind every screen is a human being with real emotions, real consequences, and real rights.

Let’s raise our standards, not just legally, but morally.

Digital literacy isn’t just for the next generation. It’s for all of us, right now.

We may not be able to reverse the damage already done, but we can build a future where “take it down” isn’t a desperate plea, it’s an immediate, unquestioned action.

PS The Social Media Association has always promoted best practices for ethical and respectful social media use.

You can learn more about their work, and how to become part of the solution, at TheSocialMediaAssociation.com.

May 28, 2025 Posted by | Uncategorized | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who will be there for you?

imagesCA95WNRFI often act as health care proxy and power of attorney for my clients.  I always make it clear that I am a Patient Advocate, not a family member. Yet, every time I speak to someone at the hospital or any care setting at all, the people constantly refer to ‘My Mom.’

Do they think they are reaching me at some level, where I will turn off my business sense and burst out in tears of thankfulness for their sensitivity. Surely they say this to everyone, like when the home health aide says “I treat everyone like my grandmother?”

I have several clients who are in their early seventies. They seem more like friends to me, since we are all baby boomers. They are nothing like my mother, who went to high school during WWII and lived through the depression. Their hair has less grey in it than mine! Yet, people still refer to them as ‘Your Mom’ when we are talking about their care.

Some of my clients have their own children, who have hired me because they want a professional to help them to navigate the complex and fragmented health care system. Some of the people have hired me themselves, because they are used to delegating to professionals or because they have hit a wall with the long-term care bureaucracy.  They need someone to take care of business, not another child.

My mother was an executive secretary to a Supreme Court Judge. She also ran political campaigns and was the go to person when something happened in the neighborhood. She knew the bankers, the lawyers and the chiefs of whatever you needed.  After she passed, many of her neighbors told me that they would miss her counsel more than anything.  Even when I had to invoke her health care proxy, I didn’t think of myself as being the decision maker. I was simply carrying out her wishes. I wasn’t the ‘child’, I was the person who she had placed her faith in to convey her preferences.

As professionals, we often talk about the importance of preplanning.  As we move into a time when long-term care will be ‘Managed’ along the lines of our health insurance plans, I ask you to consider the terminology that will be used to refer to the person receiving the care. Will it be the ‘user’, ‘the consumer’, or ‘your Mom’?  I hope it will be the ‘individual’ with all the rights and choices that come along with the title.

February 4, 2013 Posted by | Uncategorized | , , , , | Leave a comment

Fight Against Cost Shifting – Pricing vs Costs

One of my clients was in Mayo Clinic for a very severe illness. Mayo charged $50,000 for the week of care. My client feels that saving her life was certainly worth the cost. However, Medicare allowed only $800 of the billable services. For some of the itemized services, Medicare says the negotiated price was lower and therefore the patient would not owe the difference between the charged amount and what was paid. Her AARP Medigap policy payed the 20% co-pay of the reduced amount, considering that Medicare, the primary payor had negotiated the lower price.

The problem for the patient comes in where some of the itemized services were considered “uncovered services,” meaning there was no code for the service such as the hospital charged for an exam which included doing a test to determine the cause of the patients distress. It makes sense to most people that when you go to the doctor or hospital that first they exam you and then they do some tests based on their initial exam. Not to the insurance companies though. The test was considered an uncovered service because it was done on the same day as the exam. All right, I can see the test being part of the exam, but Medicare paid for the lower priced exam and not the higher costing test, which was needed to understand how to treat the patient.

In the current law which is a part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which has already been implemented (and has nothing to do with the mandate or patients using emergency rooms for primary care) the “regulations” (the provisions in the ACA) state that providers can charge the patient for “uncovered services.” So, Providers now realize that since the EOB reads “uncovered service,” they have the right to charge the patient for any “uncovered services,’ according to the insurance policy and the regulations.

Medicare is aware of this issue and their website, http://Medicare.gov states that they are looking into how this has been affecting beneficiaries, but at this time, they regret to say that the patient must pay the bill. This means that the language in the portions of the ACA that have already been implemented have caused this cost shifting.

In another demonstration of cost shifting, a client went to the hospital in pain which was determined to come from a very large kidney stone, which caused a severe infection. After a stinit was put in to hold the stone from causing more damage, the patient was sent home, still in pain with antibiotics to wait for the infection to clear. A week later, she was to report to her PCP to get a referral for a urologist. She waited three hours in the office only to be told that the doctor was too busy and a Physician’s Assistant would write the referral. Another week went by until the Urology appointment. The Urologist made a referral to a facility where a procedure could be done to break up the stone. The patient was in a lot of pain, so she asked the Urologist office if they could do anything to hurry up the appointment process. They were able to schedule the procedure for the following week at a facilty an hour away, which was the only one approved by her plan. Then, the day before the facility was to do perform the procedure, the patient gets a call that they have to reschedule because the patient only had the referral to the Urologist from the PCP and not for the procedure. Specialists cannot give referrals because that might be considered a conflict of interest. So now the patient has to wait another week to see the PCP’s Physician Assistant for a referral to the facility to remove the stone, which they were not qualified to do in the first place which is why they sent the patient to the Urologist. The facility schedules patients a month in advance, so now instead of the expedited procedure, the patient will need to go to the back of the line. Then, the paitent will need to go back to the hospital to have the stent removed. All the while, doctors and hospital are being paid for visits and the patient is paying co-pays out of pocket for visits and medications. In this situation, the insurance company and the patient are over paying due to over-regulation.

Until the doctors (AMA) and hospitals (AHA) do the hard work of determining a pricing mechanism for services instead of allowing the insurers to use a lowest negotiated rate policy, we will continue to see cost shifting with the patients on the losing end.

I am hoping that today’s students are learning how the regulations are developed, so that our new policy wonks will demand a real economic solution to health care costs instead of a political one.

July 12, 2012 Posted by | Uncategorized | , , , , | Leave a comment