⏱Hiding the price tag

A $3Tn plan, and Apple gets sued

Good morning everyone, and welcome to a great Tuesday! Thanks for spending the morning with us!

0:05- That’s a lot of zeros

• President Biden’s administration is currently organizing a new multi-part economic and jobs package aimed at fulfilling many of the campaign promises and goals that the President has set. When combined, the total cost of the plan exceeds $3Tn, a number that many Republicans have rebuffed. Among the packages would be one focused on infrastructure and one focused on education (with universal prekindergarten and free community college). Reportedly the White House is also exploring raising taxes to offset a portion of the cost of the plans.

0:28- Hospitals play hide and seek with prices

• A new federal law enacted on January 1st requires all hospitals to publish their prices in an effort to make the industry more transparent. However, while the pages are there— the hospitals are often hiding them. In an investigation by the WSJ, more than 3,100 sites were found to be embedding anti-search engine code into just their pricing page to make it impossible to find via Google, Bing, or any other search engine. Instead a user has to click through a multitude of links to find a direct URL to the page, something Thomas Barker, a healthcare attorney at Foley Hoag says, “....violates the spirit of the rule.”

0:57- Facebook purges more than 1.3Bn users

• In a press release filed yesterday, Facebook indicated that it had taken down more than 1.3Bn fake accounts between October and December of 2020 as a part of their fight against misinformation. The company also said it had more than 35k employees working on misinformation, and had removed more than 12 million posts/comments with misinformation about Covid and the vaccine.

1:13- Class Action Apple

• Yesterday a judge certified a class action lawsuit involving Apple’s butterfly keyboard design that is being accused of violating consumer protection acts. Purchasers of devices with the keyboard in seven states can fill out a survey to join the suit here. A list of affected devices and active states can be found in the article here.

1:28- Got the shot, get the sugar

• Krispy Kreme announced yesterday that they would be giving one free donut a day to anyone who’s vaccinated for the rest of the year. All you have to do is bring your vaccination card to a location!

Have a great rest of your day, and we’ll see you tomorrow bright and early!

-The 90 Second News Team

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