Cyber Insecurity - Part 4 (CalPERS releases some info)

As prior posts have noted, UCLA was subject to a data breach that has affected many other organizations. (The list keeps growing.) CalPERS is among those organizations. And now - under pressure to do so - it is releasing more information about those whose information was lost. From the Sacramento Bee we learn that those affected by the CalPERS breach are not satisfied with what they have learned. However, they seem to have more resources and information available to them - thanks to political pressure - than has occurred at UCLA:

The California Public Employee and Retirement System launched its three-day offsite meeting in Monterey with a long-awaited update on a June data breach that exposed Social Security numbers, birth dates and other personal information on nearly 1.2 million retirees and other beneficiaries. The update follows a call from California State Treasurer Fiona Ma, who sits on both the CalPERS and CalSTRS boards, for the nation’s two largest public pension funds to hold special meetings and provide members with an update on the organization’s response to the breach. 

“We know what an unsettling experience this has been for our retirees,” said CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost less than five minutes after the board convened at 9 a.m. “So, I want to address what we’re doing to make the recovery process as smooth as possible for them.” The third-party vendor that was hacked, PBI Research/Berwyn Group, works with CalPERS and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System to identify any members who have died, which helps the agencies prevent overpayments or other errors. 

CalPERS said that PBI was using a data transfer application called MoveIt Transfer, made by Progress Software, that organizations around the nation use to share data securely. The application boasts encryption, tracking and access controls for secure collaboration and automated transfers. In the Monday update, Frost said CalPERS has received nearly 4,000 calls about the breach at its own customer contact center. The average wait time is one minute, she said. Retirees can also send in questions to the email address pbiquestions@calpers.ca.gov, which Frost said is monitored by CalPERS managerial staff. The average wait time for an email response is less than 24 hours, she said. The pension fund also established a special call center with Experian, which has fielded nearly 34,000 calls. Callers were experiencing “alarming” wait times, Frost said, so last weekend the call center added 50 more representatives to help bring wait times back down to one to two minutes. 

So far, about 122,000 CalPERS retirees have signed up for two years of free credit monitoring and identity restoration services through Experian. Frost said this represents a higher-than-expected response, according to Experian, when compared to other companies that it’s worked with following data breaches. (Frost noted that these companies were largely private employers, rather than public pension funds.) 

Frost suggested members could find answers to their questions at calpers.ca.gov/page/home/pbi. She encouraged people who need more help to send an email to pbiquestions@calpers.ca.gov or contact the CalPERS call center at (833)-919-4735. The hours are 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends. “We realize how sensitive this situation is,” Frost said, “and again, we want to reassure our retirees that we’ll do everything possible to help them through the situation.” 

RETIREES SAY CALPERS ISN’T DOING ENOUGH 

Devara “Dev” Berger, a retiree who used to work for CalPERS overseeing health legislation, didn’t know that the board would provide an update at its offsite meeting. When she looked at the agenda, she saw no indication that the board would discuss the breach or take public comments from members. “CalPERS is foisting the majority of action about the breach onto us,” Berger said. “That is what infuriates us. That shows a complete lack of integrity and leadership.” Berger is upset that the pension fund’s board hasn’t heeded the state treasurer’s request to host a public hearing or town hall where members can directly engage with board members. “I’m not buying into it,” Berger said. “I’m not buying into CalPERS telling me ‘c’est la vie.’”

Source: https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/the-state-worker/article277400423.html.

Watch the Regents Meeting of 7-20-2023

We are jumping ahead in our coverage of the Regents meetings of Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday. We previously covered Tuesday.* Yesterday, we posted a brief excerpt of yours truly during the Thursday meeting phoning in a public comment regarding improper cancellation of UC retiree-survivor health insurance.** We will cover the morning and afternoon sessions of the Wednesday meetings in a later post. 

There was something of a mystery at the beginning of the Thursday session. It was supposed to start with a closed full board session and then open up for public comments around 10 am. But in fact, the Regents stayed closed until around 11:30 am, apparently leaving those folks who wanted to comment in-person out in the hot sun, When the meeting finally opened, chair Leib apologized profusely for the delay saying some kind of "emergency" caused the delay. There was no hint as to the nature of the emergency. The Regents then passed a resolution saying that in the future when meetings began with a closed session, public comments would always be taken first.

Because of the delay, significant business was postponed to the next regular Regents meetings in September. (There will be an off-cycle meeting of the Health Services committee in August.) Apart from the public comments, the remainder of the session was largely devoted to ceremonial purposes such as handing out award and rubber-stamping the recommendations passed by the various committees that had met earlier on Wednesday. 

Public comments dealt with the hotel strike in which UC has indirect investment via the ever-controversial Blackstone, the hiring of UC of undocumented students (under study), affordable housing for students, the Hawaiian telescope, the Phillipines and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and - of course - yours truly on improper survivor cancellations.

One of the student speakers during the ceremonial portion referred to the aftermath of the UC-San Diego student-worker strike in which arrests were made. (See earlier posts on this blog.) We noted in a prior post that some kind of search warrant appeared to have been issued.*** It was said that laptops had been confiscated. Details were not provided. 

As always, we preserve recordings of Regents meetings since the Regents have no specific policy on length of retention. You can find the Thursday meeting recording at:

https://archive.org/details/regents-board-governance-7-20-2023/Regents+Comment+-+stop+survivor+health+cancellation+7-20-2023.mp4.

===

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/07/watch-regents-committee-on-innovation.html.

**https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/07/ucop-needs-to-make-call-to-protect_20.html. 

***https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/07/problematic-search.html.

UCOP Needs to Make the Call to Protect Survivor Health Insurance - Part 6 (Request to Regents)

Don't be afraid, UCOP. Pick up the phone.

In our continued quest to get UCOP to halt the improper practice of cancelling survivor health insurance upon the death of a UC emeriti or retiree, we have now called on the UC Regents via a public comment at today's meeting for assistance. 

An audio recording is below.

Again, three Emeriti Associations (UCLA, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara) have passed resolutions calling on UCOP to end the practice, It can be cured by a simple phone call from UCOP to the insurance carriers instructing them not to cancel the policies of survivors. In prior posts, we have dealt with this unfortunate practice and the seeming reasons why it continues.*

Public comment at Regents on survivor cancellations can be heard at:

Or direct to https://ia802701.us.archive.org/10/items/regents-board-governance-7-20-2023/Regents%20Comment%20-%20stop%20survivor%20health%20cancellation%207-20-2023.mp4.

UCOP...Pick...Up...the...Phone!

===

*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/07/ucop-needs-to-make-call-to-protect.html

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/06/ucop-needs-to-make-call-to-protect_30.html

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/06/ucop-needs-to-make-call-to-protect_17.html

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/06/ucop-needs-to-make-call-to-protect.html

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/04/ucop-needs-to-make-call-to-protect.html

Problematic Search

UAW local 2865 - which represents student-workers - posted this undated document yesterday via Twitter.* It appears to be a page of some kind of search warrant, but no other pages were posted and I could find no other information on the union's website. There was brief reference to the search at yesterday's Regents meeting during public comments. 

The text of the tweet reads: 

In case anyone still thought this was about "graffiti"—UC is clearly misusing their private police to target unions. Last night they searched a member’s home for: “Evidence of membership or affiliation with any university organization […] to include any reference to "UAW"

As blog readers will know, the reference to graffiti refers to arrests at UC-San Diego for which, at least so far, no charges have been filed.

There are questions of labor law raised by the search. No other references could be found in a quick search of the student newspaper at UC-SD or elsewhere. However, absent other information, it appears that the university has escalated the original incident.

===

*https://twitter.com/uaw2865/status/1681761772448133120.

Can't Complain

In recent years, there have been concerns and complaints that UC has fewer friends in the legislature. In the good old days, it was said, members of the legislature were often UC grads, but that is less so today.

As it happens, the new majority leader in the state assembly IS a UCLA grad. Isaac Bryan recently was elected to that post (not to be confused with the speaker of the assembly post).

The Daily Bruin has a profile and interview with Assemblymember Bryan at the link below:

https://dailybruin.com/2023/07/19/ucla-alumnus-isaac-bryan-discusses-new-role-as-state-assembly-majority-leader.

Merger & Acquisition

In our earlier post about the public comments at today's Regents meeting, we did not mention some comments by medical staff at Catholic hospitals UC-San Francisco wants to acquire. There were demands for staff to have a "seat at the table" as to how such a purchase would work out. The acquired hospitals would, if purchased, lose their religious affilation which has posed problems for UC in the past because of issues such as abortion.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

On Wednesday, the University of California regents will decide whether to green-light formal negotiations, which could lead to an agreement by year’s end. The properties are assessed at $121 million to $192 million, but UCSF is offering just $100 million and said it would spend another $100 million to improve and expand them. Saint Francis Memorial now loses $32 million a year and St. Mary’s loses $22 million. Hospital officials see the takeovers as a way to help ease the overcrowding its patients have complained about for years. “We just have more demand than we can satisfy,” Suresh Gunasekaran, UCSF Health’s chief executive, told The Chronicle. He said he isn’t sure yet how many more patients UCSF’s doctors could see if a deal goes through. Last year, they served about 2.5 million outpatients.

The hospital also accommodates more than 300,000 admitted patients a year — more than any other UC hospital, and more than double the number served by Kaiser San Francisco and Sutter Health’s California Pacific Medical Center campus on Van Ness Avenue combined. Buying the two Dignity hospitals would give UCSF two more emergency rooms and 569 more beds, UCSF said. St. Mary’s Medical Center in San Francisco now loses $22 million per year, while Saint Francis Memorial loses $32 million. Buying the two Dignity hospitals would give UCSF two more emergency rooms and about 200 more beds.

The 166-year-old St. Mary’s serves 20,000 admitted patients per year, while Saint Francis Memorial, also more than 100 years old, serves 16,000. But most of their beds are usually empty, according to the American Hospital Directory, which said the hospitals only fill about a quarter of them. By contrast, UCSF said its beds are 94% filled...

Full story at https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ucsf-hospitals-18199779.php.

Old timers may remember a failed merger involving UC-San Francisco and Stanford hospital. From Stanford Magazine of January/February 2000:

It was Gerhard Casper who finally pulled the plug. After months of dismal financial reports, Stanford's president called late last fall for a breakup of the two-year-old merger of the medical centers at Stanford and UC-San Francisco. "With great anguish I have concluded that, in our efforts to find bold solutions to the problems of academic medical centers, we have taken on too much," Casper wrote in an October 28 letter to University of California President Richard Atkinson.

The unprecedented merger of private and public university medical centers was supposed to help the two schools weather the financial pressures of managed care. By pooling resources and increasing bargaining power, UCSF Stanford Health Care was projected to save $256 million by 2000. But instead the company, which was set up in November 1997, lost $86 million last fiscal year. As the two medical centers prepare to formally split up, Stanford looks at why the merger failed:

Separate Staffs: The venture's biggest downfall may have been that it never managed to bind the two institutions together with a common culture. Most professors continued to identify almost exclusively with their home campus. A September 1, 1999, deadline for consolidating clinical services came and went with little action. With the exception of pediatrics, doctors didn't combine their practices, share risks or pool revenue as the merger's architects had hoped they would. "We did not fully grasp the complexity of integrating two very different institutions," Casper said in an interview the month before he called off the union.

Revenue Shortfalls: The economic pressures that led to the merger only increased as the new corporation got on its feet. Managed care companies continued to cut payments to hospitals while, at the same time, the state and federal government trimmed reimbursements. At the federal level, the 1997 U.S. Balanced Budget Act resulted in a $10 million drop in Medicare payouts to the hospitals. Meanwhile, the state's Medi-Cal program cut payments, making it clear that academic medical centers would have to shoulder an increasing share of the cost of treating the poor. All told, UCSF Stanford Health Care provided more than $100 million in unreimbursed care last year.

Higher Costs: On top of those problems, the company's officials faced the unexpectedly daunting costs of the merger itself. For example, integrating computer systems at the two schools cost $126 million, five times what was expected. And the payroll ballooned. A state audit of the company released in August said 1,000 employees were brought on board after the merger. Proponents of the venture had projected only 200 new hires.

The Unexpected: "There were a lot of surprises about the financials of the two institutions, particularly the seriousness of the financial difficulties on the [San Francisco] campus," says Larry Lewin, founder of The Lewin Group, a health care consulting firm. Lewin facilitated early discussions between the two schools but was not involved in the audits that preceded the merger. One shocker was how much money UCSF's Mount Zion Hospital was losing. Three-quarters of the $86 million in losses during the last fiscal year came at UCSF facilities. Mount Zion alone lost nearly $60 million. The hospital, which served many of San Francisco's low-income residents and was the subject of vocal support from state and local politicians, shut its doors in November.

The total price tag for the merger -- $79 million -- may pale in comparison to what it costs to unravel the two medical centers. Each school will take back the resources it brought to the marriage (Stanford put in assets valued at $458 million; UCSF put in $415 million), and then the losses are to be divided 50-50. But by the middle of November, the two sides had drawn up a seven-page memo detailing issues that still needed to be resolved. Officials hope the two centers will be separated by March 1. But it won't be easy or cheap. As Lee Goldman, UCSF's acting vice chancellor for medical affairs, quipped: "Have you ever seen a divorce that was cheaper than the wedding?" ...

Full story at https://stanfordmag.org/contents/the-anatomy-of-a-failed-hospital-merger.

Does anyone on the Regents know or, or remember, this history?

No train/No pay increase

From an email received today:

...The Chancellor and the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost have directed that no discretionary compensation actions, such as the special 4.6% increase to the off-scale dollar increment, should be approved for ladder rank faculty unless they have completed the mandatory UC Preventing Harassment & Discrimination training by September 1, 2023. Ladder rank faculty who come into compliance after October 1, 2023 will have their off-scales adjusted as of the date the training is completed... 

Full memo at https://view.bp.e.ucla.edu/?qs=c5148d3aa2cae6f46b556fd6b3a859d91d1138f6d3bb6e52f1dc81ac132fdc11c46f589a044d10605098b3f534d7bde35c51ffd4dcc054a209ea2b048ff4f127472d3de1462b8cf103fb731b871d3df2.