By Kevin Drum
You’ve probably signed away your right to sue your cell phone
carrier, your cable company, and maybe your doctor and dentist too.
Instead, if you have a complaint, you’re required to take it to
arbitration, whether you want to or not.
How do they get away with this? Mostly by giving you no choice. You
probably have only one cable company to choose from. There are four big
cell phone carriers, but they all mandate arbitration. And it’s so
common among doctors that you’d have a hard time finding one who doesn’t
require it. In practice, they require it because they have enough
market power to make it stick.
It’s ironic, then, that nursing homes don’t like it when someone with even more market power than them turns the tables:
In October 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
decided to push back on mandatory arbitration. By rule, CMS adopted a
novel “condition of participation” for Medicare and Medicaid. Nursing
homes that participate in the programs—which is to say, all nursing
homes—could no longer ask their residents to sign away their right to
sue upon entering the nursing home.
Click here for the full article.
Source: Mother Jones
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