In Defense of Legacy

The recent college admissions scandal has brought attention to various ways that applicants get preferential treatment. In the scam, wealthy parents paid huge sums to circumvent normal admissions procedures in order to get their children admitted to select universities. They paid to have sports experience faked and SAT answers changed or even to have someone smarter take the tests.

Students who played fairly and were denied admissions were not the only ones affected by this. The negative fallout from the scandal has also cast a shadow over students who were accepted following the rules but now have folks wondering about them. Several subsequent opinion pieces criticized legal ways to get preferential treatment, particularly legacy admissions.

For some, “legacy” seems to have become a four-letter word. They see it as a way to stack the deck and to prime parents for big donations. They wonder why schools have legacy programs to begin with. In fact, it’s not about elitism; non-elite schools have legacy programs, too. The answer is as simple as family unity, “team” loyalty and chest-thumping, button-bursting pride.

My alma mater, Brown University, is one of the schools known for its legacy admissions. I wasn’t one of them and I’m happy to report that Brown was not one of the schools involved in the scandal. I’ve been active in their fundraising and I have some knowledge about how things work there. I’m speaking out in defense of Brown’s legacy program and legacy admissions in general.

The percentage of Brown legacies that get admitted is not as high as many might expect. Unofficially, Bruno accepts them at roughly three times the rate of non-legacies. Unqualified legacies are not admitted. Moreover, not all legacies come from wealthy families. I know several parents who were so angry because of this that they disengaged from Brown completely. On the flip side, I’ve seen alumni families on campus taking multi-generational photos. Their joy was palpable.

My high school had something called Girls’ Sports Night, with two teams, one for each school color. If you had an older sister, you could choose to be on the same color team as she had been. Others were assigned to a color randomly, by lot. The option was a form of legacy favoritism. I, along with many of my classmates, took advantage of this. It helped promote sibling unity, avoiding rivalry. It also kept parents from having to cheer for two teams, or no team.

Legacy college admissions can promote family unity. Consider the news features about professional football brothers (or coaches) on opposing teams. Their family members sit on a different sideline when the teams meet. Or maybe they move from one side of the field to the other at half time. Without legacy programs, the same would be true of hundreds of parents of college athletes around the country.

Earlier I said that legacy is also about pride. Think about how many people have Junior after their name. Or II or III. Why does a father want his son to carry his same name, and his grandson and so on? It’s because of pride in what that family name signifies, the generations of accomplishments. It’s also the expectation to have Junior carry on traditions. Similarly, Jewish parents often name their babies after deceased relatives. It provides continuity. It’s a way to honor those who have passed and preserve their memory. This custom is also a form of legacy, and a touching one, at that.

Legacy is not a dirty word. Neither are pride or loyalty or unity. Scam and fraud, on the other hand, are. Don’t debase legacy admissions by equating them with the unfair practices exposed in the recent college scandal. Those scams were perpetrated in the shadows. Don’t elevate them by conflating them with legacy programs that have openly promoted family unity for generations.

Copyright 2019 Business Theatre Unlimited

Retirement Warnings - Why Our Health Care Is So High

In case you’re wondering why our health care is so high, here’s a news blurb that explains a lot of it. It’s from “What an Outrage” in September’s AARP Bulletin.

A podiatrist copped a Medicare fraud plea to the tune of $1 million plus. My first reaction was: Can a podiatrist have a business that big, even with fraud? Then I remembered that my mother visited one regularly to get her toenails clipped. I guess when we get up there in age, if we’re not religious about our stretching exercises, we can’t reach our feet to do this on our own. Note to self: Kudos for your diligence and keep it up.

The podiatrist accomplished his fraud using “Medicare Advantage,” a program offered through private insurers but regulated by the feds. The podiatrist operated in Maryland, practically under the fed’s nose. It gets better. During the time he submitted the tainted claims he was prohibited from participating in federal health care programs. That’s right. His name was on a banned providers list, yet his claims sailed through.

That’s not even my favorite part of this story. According to AARP, he actually billed for foot care on a double amputee. The outrage blurb quotes a professor from the Kennedy School of Government in what may be the colossal understatement of the year. “There are many faults within the system.” Ya think?

This story naturally spurred me to search for more Medicare fraud. While I didn’t turn up anything as outrageous as the footless foot care, there’s been a lot about Medicare fraud in the news recently.

Co-owners of a chain of mental health clinics ran a $205 million Medicare fraud scheme and have just been sentenced to 50 years in prison. They’re convicted of supplying bogus therapy services to thousands of elderly, including Alzheimer’s patients who couldn’t have benefitted from group therapy. I’ll bet they billed for services to some congressmen, too. You have to wonder how someone with no brain could be helped by mental health therapy.

Two weeks ago the feds charged 91 individuals in eight cities for participation in Medicare fraud schemes involving a quarter of a billion in false claims. The charges are based on a variety of schemes involving medical treatments and services, such as home healthcare, mental health services and durable medical equipment (DME.)

The latter is the most common area of Medicare fraud, via billing for equipment that was never delivered. DME includes wheelchairs, hospital beds and the mobility scooters you see in those goofy infomercials.

Certain people should not be allowed to have scooters. They never drove a car; they never even rode a bicycle. They’re dangerous just pushing a shopping cart around the grocery store. You can be sure many Medicare claims for scooters are for people who (in some cases mercifully) never got them.

Even Nebraska, home state of America’s favorite boy-next-door Johnny Carson, is not immune to scams. The state website reports that scammers pitch free health care supplies as a way to get Medicare numbers. If you suffer from back pain, you could be offered not just a free back brace, but a knee brace, too. Sign now and get braces for both knees! (If you need one for your third leg, you’re on your own.)

The Nebraska site also warns about giving out Medicare information to people at health fairs (or was that county fairs?) providing services like blood pressure reading, toenail clipping and diabetic shoes. Aha! My mother was right in step with the rest of Americana. I’m aware that PETA extremists eschew shoes made of leather. But what the heck are diabetic shoes? Made from the hide of cows on a sugar-free diet? And are there gluten-free shoes, too?

As a final test of the system, I decided to get a prescription for Viagra. It was filled without even a wink. Some of you are thinking: “What do you expect. We always knew you had brass ones.” Perhaps. But I’m missing the piece that does the heavy lifting, so to speak. (You know, that third leg that isn’t eligible for a Medicare-approved brace…)

And don’t tell me that Medicare thought they were approving female Viagra. Pfizer doesn’t produce it. Unofficial female Viagra is out there in an appropriate pink color, but don’t expect Medicare to pay for it.

I have a surefire idea for keeping costs down. First, find a foot care buddy, like you had for grade school fire drills. Second, pick out a nice bottle of wine. Once a week, get together and clip one another’s toenails. Then open the wine and admire your beautiful feet. (Remember: Clip first, wine after.) You won’t need a podiatrist and you sure won’t need therapy.

Retirement Lessons – Phishing and More

Most of you have heard the term “phishing,” a criminal activity wherein the source deliberately mimics (or “spoofs”) the look of legitimate enterprises in an attempt to get you to give up personal information that they then use for illegal purposes. You may know that retirees are especially subject to these attacks.

I guess phishers think that people who have reached retirement age lose their common sense at the same time they lose their paychecks. Or perhaps that their visual acuity has declined to the point that they won’t notice that the logo for their bank has suddenly changed from red and blue to orange and purple. Or that their ability to process language has atrophied so much that it won’t register when a singular subject has a plural verb, or other glaring grammar errors abound.

Phishing is generally done via email, which affords the opportunity to create a convincingly authentic looking message. (Spoofy, isn’t it?) There are many legitimate websites that will give you pointers about how to avoid being phished and tell you what to do if you smell something phishy. Here are just three:
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/phishing/symptoms.aspx
http://www.antiphishing.org/
http://www.onguardonline.gov/topics/phishing.aspx

Today I want to warn you about related schemes, so that you can be vigilant and protect yourselves against them, too. (The onguardonline site listed above covers some of these.) It’s our duty as vibrant retirees (or soon to be, or those who aspire to be…) to put the lie to these stereotypes.

“Smishing” is similar to phishing, but it’s done over mobile devices that use SMS (Short Message Service). [I am not making this up.] It relies on what is commonly referred to as social engineering. This is ironic, since smishing is clearly an anti-social behavior. [Side note to anyone who has heard of Snookie and the Jersey Shore gang, smishing is not the same as smooshing. Google that one, if you dare. If you want to smoosh, go for it.]

Since SMS was created for short messages, legitimate users employ all sorts of abbreviations and acronyms. This makes it more difficult to detect the grammar errors made by smishers that can be so obvious in phishing. My best advice on how to avoid being smished is to steer clear of SMS in the first place. Absent that, I’d create a secret code word that people you want to SMS with must use before you ack them. Here’s one that’s not likely to show up randomly (or in the Jersey Shore lexicon, BTW): “civility.”

Next on the list is “vishing,” which is phone based and usually relies on VOIP technology (Voice Over Internet Protocol.) [I am not making this up either.] Using VOIP means the communication is computer-based, providing the same ability to mimic legitimate business contacts as phishing does. If your extended family communicates with you over SKYPE, for instance, you could be the target of a vicious vishing attack. So beware. The good news is that the same secret code you use with SMS can help you distinguish genuine well wishers from bad vishers with evil intentions.

All of this puts me in mind of the first generation of stealth communication, which was popular two to three decades ago. It involved people calling you at home claiming to be market researchers but really having ulterior motives. Legitimate market researchers were steadfastly committed to, but unsuccessful in, eradicating this bogus activity.

The first of these was called SUGging. (I kid you not.) SUGging stands for “Selling Under the Guise of” conducting market research. You’d get a call from a group conducting market research on some topic. The first few questions sounded legitimate, and the next thing you knew—wham! You were on the receiving end of an aggressive sales pitch for a product coincidentally related to the “research” being conducted.

SUGging was so successful that FRUGging soon followed. (Again, not my acronym, but if you like smooshing, you probably have raunchy thoughts when you hear “frugging.”) “FRUGging” stands for “Fund Raising Under the Guise of” conducting market research. Same type of call, claiming to be conducting research on some pressing social issue. Same initial reasonable questions. Same wham! leading to a request for a contribution to a group whose mission was miraculously aligned to the issue being researched.

You don’t hear much about sugging and frugging these days, probably because of the “do not call” registry. Maybe pressures will come to bear that will result in “do not phish, smish or vish” registries, too. One can only wish.