It’s just a bill
Wednesday, Jan 22, 2025 - Posted by Isabel Miller
* WGLT…
A Republican state lawmaker from Morton is sponsoring a bill making it illegal for insurance companies to place a time limit on anesthesia payment coverage.
Rep. Bill Hauter, who represents a heavily rural area between Bloomington-Normal, Peoria, Decatur and Springfield, said the bill was a response to Blue Cross attempting to place a time limit on anesthesia in New York, Missouri and Connecticut. That decision was upended by public outcry, but in Missouri, the time limit will go into effect in February. […]
Hauter said as a health care worker, he has seen insurance companies focus too much on profit over the well-being of their patients. […]
The bill was created in collaboration with Rep. Diane Blair-Sherlock, D-Villa Park, who called up Hauter after the Blue Cross announcement. Hauter said he anticipates the bill will have further bipartisan support.
* In 2021, an Earlville police officer suffered two fractured vertebrae in his neck during a police chase. The woman involved was sentenced to 30 months of felony probation and 180 days in county jail. The injured officer denounced the probation, saying she should have gone to prison. Sen. Sue Rezin filed SB112 last week…
Amends the Illinois Vehicle Code. Provides that any person convicted of the offense of aggravated fleeing or attempting to elude a peace officer commits: a Class 3 felony if the convicted person causes bodily injury to any bystander or member of the public; a Class 2 felony if the convicted person causes bodily injury to the pursuing peace officer; and a Class 1 felony if the convicted person causes great bodily injury or disablement to the pursuing peace officer.
* HB1569 from Rep. Dave Vella…
Creates the Access to Medically Necessary Vaccinations Act. Provides that any health care provider in this State must provide a vaccination to a patient if: the patient has requested the specific vaccination to be administered; the health care provider has determined that the vaccination is medically necessary; and the health care provider has a stock of one or more doses of the vaccination that have not been reserved for another patient. Prohibits a health care provider from preventing a medically necessary vaccination from being administered to a patient by keeping separate stocks of the vaccination for patients with private insurance and stocks of the vaccination for patients with Medicaid.
* Sen. Craig Wilcox filed SB140 last week…
Amends the Illinois Income Tax Act. Creates an income tax deduction for gratuities that are included in the taxpayer’s federal adjusted gross income. Effective immediately.
* Rep. Jaime Andrade filed HB1565…
Creates the Anti-Click Gambling Data Analytics Collection Act. Provides that no entity that operates a remote gambling platform or a subsidiary of the entity shall collect data from a participant with the intent to predict how the participant will gamble in a particular gambling or betting scenario. Effective immediately.
Business Insider…
Just as Netflix uses machine learning and data science to tailor each user’s feed to what they’re most likely to binge, the startup Future Anthem uses similar tools to keep users hooked on casino websites. The UK-based software provider builds a personalized, dynamic homepage, presenting the exact right game — bingo, slots, poker — to cater to a player’s desires at the exact right moment, offering bonuses if the player is getting dejected and keeping them betting for longer. […]
In a research paper published last May, the consultancy giant Deloitte’s Global Lottery and Gambling Centre of Excellence predicted a future where every game could be personalized in real time to appeal to individual gamblers. Generative AI, the authors wrote, could “allow the games themselves to generate content based on the explicit or even implicit actions of players, from instantly generated new items and playing levels to in-game characters that can have lifelike discussions.”
The technology, they continued, could create “individually themed online slot games that can respond to a player’s voice and even generate novel content in response to a player’s behavior and game history.” Generative AI chatbots the players could talk to, games with themes automatically tailored to their preference — the ultimate filter bubble. Social media’s endlessly personalized carousel of content is already notoriously addictive, and the damaging parasocial relationships that can be formed with AI chatbots are currently under a microscope following reports of suicide and self-harm linked to a popular provider. Adding these elements to the famously powerful money-extraction machine that is online gambling is a potent combination.
- Stephanie Kollmann - Wednesday, Jan 22, 25 @ 9:55 am:
What will higher penalties for fleeing drivers do to stop police from initiating and continuing dangerous vehicle pursuits when not strictly necessary?
- TheInvisibleMan - Wednesday, Jan 22, 25 @ 9:57 am:
“Creates the Anti-Click Gambling Data Analytics Collection Act.”
It’s gambling, not investing. Why are we attempting to treat gambling entities as if they are fiduciaries? This makes no sense, and I think we’re missing the forest for the trees if this path is taken.
The solution to problems within gambling, is better financial education. Micromanaging how gambling works simply gives more faux-credibility to the activity of gambling than it has on its own and will end up making the problems with gambling even worse.
News stories love running the seemingly feel-good stories of people wining a large payout in a lottery. News stories rarely if ever follow-up on those ‘winners’ years later to see if their life actually ended up being better because of their winnings while gambling - hint it almost never is which is exactly why you never see those stories.
I’d love to see legislation which requires a 1:1 amount of commercial time for state-supported gambling - requiring a minute of commercial time following up on the statistics of lottery winners over the long-term, for every minute of commercial time showing people full of smiles while gambling.
That would have far more impact on this than any micromanaging of methods of gambling. To be serious about this we gotta go to the root of the issue, not meaninglessly play around in the foliage. Will it solve all the problems, of course not. It would lead to more of the desired outcomes than these half-measures ever will though.
- Perrid - Wednesday, Jan 22, 25 @ 10:25 am:
How would the “Access to Medically Necessary Vaccinations Act” interact with the federal VFC program? In VFC the CDC basically gives free vaccines to the state/providers to give to eligible children, those on Medicaid or with no insurance, basically. So it sounds like providers would have to mix the free vaccines from the CDC with the vaccines they have to pay/charge for? That can’t be good for those on Medicaid. Unless there is some angle I’m not seeing…
- OneMan - Wednesday, Jan 22, 25 @ 11:00 am:
Over 20 years ago, I was very heavily involved in an IT project for one of Chicago’s oldest companies that involved gathering a large amount of data and reporting and analyzing it. These systems were (and still are) known as data warehouses. I went to a few conferences on the subject, it was the early days of these sytems. One popular way of illustrating what they could do is how the systems at grocery stores showed a correlation between people who purchased beer and diapers. One of the vendors even used that in ads in business magazines.
When you went to the conferences however, the demo data was almost always involved casinos, thanks to player cards, technology in the machines and at the tables, they had a large amount of customer data. One vendor’s system ran on high-end hardware (the same equipment that Industrial Light and Magic used to do special effects), and they would ‘fly’ into a casino and could show you by machine what the action was and who the action was from. I have to say the graphics made the data very easy to understand, and I can only imagine where the technology is at now. Data from the casinos made these systems look good.
I suspect the sports books are already doing this, using player data to determine what promos to run for that, what bets to show at the app’s top, etc. I would be surprised if they don’t already. The same is true with casinos. I am confident they are running stuff all the time to try and model player tendencies based on classification and even individual gamblers.
I think that horse has left the barn.
However, a narrower ban on using the data to modify gameplay or game design for an individual gambler might not be a bad idea and is likely more practical.
Also, allowing this data to be used to identify problem gambling should not only be allowed (it is also referenced in the paper), but encouraged.
- H-W - Wednesday, Jan 22, 25 @ 12:38 pm:
Good point, Stephanie.
- Demoralized - Wednesday, Jan 22, 25 @ 2:17 pm:
I see the anti law enforcement crowd is out in full force today on here