“The reappointment of the notoriously anti-EV Akio Toyoda to Toyota’s Board of Directors is another shameful mark for the company, despite prominent proxy advisors Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services and other investors opposing the appointment. 

“Hopes Toyota might turn a corner after Mr. Toyoda stepped down as CEO last year have evaporated as the company only pursues more of the same. Toyota’s foot-dragging on manufacturing zero-emission vehicles is severely out of touch with growing consumer demand and threatens to put efforts to slow the climate crisis further out of reach. Despite shareholder pressure two years in a row to disclose its climate-related lobbying, the automaker continues to aggressively lobby against policies that prioritize cleaner vehicles, choosing to instead mislead the public into thinking some of its gas-powered vehicles are zero-emission electric vehicles. 

“If Mr. Toyoda really wants to ‘leave the job of creating the future in the capable hands of the next generation,’ as the chairman’s letter recently stated, then now is the time for him to step fully aside. With Chairman Toyoda pulling the strings, Toyota will be left in the dust by competitors who are embracing the shift to zero emissions while Toyota disregards the harms its climate inaction has on communities around the world.”

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The post After AGM vote, Toyota shareholders hold firm with anti-EV leadership team appeared first on Public Citizen.

“The Pentagon is paying for planes that can’t fly, helicopters that have to land after 30 minutes, and ships that barely float. 

“A functioning Congress would demand accountability, slash the Pentagon budget, and devote hundreds of billions in savings to priority human needs – from reducing child poverty to speeding the transition to clean energy, from providing child care to expanding and improving Medicare.

“Instead, a Congress indentured to the military-industrial complex rubberstamps a nearly $900 billion Pentagon budget, fast on its way to hitting $1 trillion.

“Preposterously, the Republican-controlled Rules Committee refused to permit a vote on amendments that would have enabled an actual debate about spending levels for a bill that authorizes half the country’s discretionary budget. 

“Republican insistence on outrageous, extraneous culture war provisions in the NDAA should not distract from the actual purpose of the NDAA – and the desperate imperative to curtail Pentagon spending.”

The post House-Passed NDAA Funds Waste, Fraud, Excess Spending appeared first on Public Citizen.

This spending does not translate to better health care. The Commonwealth Fund has found that the United States experiences worse health outcomes despite spending significantly more on health care than its peers.

Meanwhile, earlier this month, Public Citizen urged the Biden administration to protect patients from profiteering by private equity, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies. A recent study revealed that privatized Medicare has cost U.S. taxpayers more than half a trillion dollars between 2007-2023 – including $82 billion last year alone.

Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, released the following statement:

“Within this decade, health care expenses are projected to amount to one in five dollars in the economy. This has nothing to do with improving care and everything to do with price-gouging, monopolization and wealth extraction by insurance corporations, Big Pharma and for-profit hospitals. Privatized Medicare, for example, cost taxpayers more than half a trillion dollars over a decade and a half, and will take even more – much more – in the decade to come.

“We have known for decades that health care costs in the U.S. are out of control. The jaw-dropping figures from CMS highlight the need to move to Medicare for All immediately so that we can finally start to make health care more affordable for taxpayers, while ensuring everyone in America can access the care and medicines they need. Other countries spend far less per capita on health care while guaranteeing coverage and providing higher quality care. It is time that we do the same.”

The post National Health Spending to Reach $7.7 Trillion by 2032 appeared first on Public Citizen.

Intimate deepfakes cause serious harm to innocent people. Victims report experiencing significant emotional consequences and trauma, as well as damage to their reputation and career. The vast majority of the victims are women and girls.

This past October, more than 30 teen girls in New Jersey were violated when A.I.-generated nude images of them were circulated at their high school.

“No one should have to worry that they or their child might be violated by an intimate deepfake,” said Rep. Tsernoglou (D-East Lansing), who is chair of the Michigan House Elections Committee and sponsor of House Bill 5569. “Passing legislation like this gives us a broader set of tools to counter emerging threats involving A.I. and as we have seen, these threats are already causing serious harm to victims.”

“Michigan took a bold step forward today to address one of the many threats posed by A.I. deepfakes,” said Rep. Matthew Bierlein (R-Vassar), sponsor of House Bill 5570. “As A.I. evolves beyond current legal frameworks, it’s important for legislators to establish that the distribution of nonconsensual intimate deepfakes will be criminalized so that perpetrators will be held accountable and victims can seek justice.”

“It has become disturbingly easy to exploit individuals by using their likeness in these explicit images, and it will only become easier as deepfake technology advances,” said Ilana Beller, organizing manager for Public Citizen’s democracy campaign. “As the circulation of intimate deepfakes increases, regulation is critical, and we applaud the Michigan House for passing this legislation.”

The post Michigan House Passes Bill Regulating Intimate A.I. Deepfakes appeared first on Public Citizen.

Public Citizen’s health care policy advocate Eagan Kemp released the following statement:

“Public Citizen applauds the Biden administration for taking this important step to reduce the impact of medical debt that burdens the lives of tens of millions of Americans. No one should face difficulty finding housing, getting a job, or starting a business just because they had a medical emergency.

“While this move is a step in the right direction, we must continue to push back on the corporate greed that leads to medical debt in the first place. Insurance companies, Big Pharma, and private equity are making our for-profit health care system a nightmare. That’s why we have urged the administration to take broader interagency action: Foundational change is necessary if we are to finally put patients ahead of profit, as our peer nations already do.”

The post CFPB Move to Block Medical Debt from Credit Reporting A “Step in the Right Direction” appeared first on Public Citizen.

“As major provisions of the 2017 Trump tax giveaway law expire, and our country gears up for the incoming tax fight, this committee hearing provides a most welcome perspective: Wall Street should be chipping in more toward important investments like childcare, health care, and addressing the climate crisis,” said Susan Harley, managing director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “For example, a tiny financial transaction tax on Wall Street trades has the dual benefit of progressively creating significant revenue while taming high-frequency trading that can harm investors.”

“Soaring CEO and C-suite compensation has concentrated the fruits of American enterprise in a few hands, leaving average workers without adequate pay,” said Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate for Congress Watch. “We support sensible tax policy that rewards companies with a smaller ratio between CEO and worker pay, embodied in a bill authored by Budget Chair Whitehouse.”

The post Upcoming U.S. Sen. Budget Committee Hearing Aims to Highlight How Wall Street Escapes Paying Its Fair Share in Taxes appeared first on Public Citizen.

In testimony, Public Citizen’s Health Research Group urged the committee to recommend that the FDA not approve donanemab. Nonetheless, for the population enrolled in the clinical trials, the committee voted 11-0 that donanemab is effective for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, and 11-0 that the benefits of donanemab outweigh the risks. Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, released the following statement:

“The advisory committee meeting was very disappointing. The essential issue was not the specifics of the potential prescribing information for donanemab but whether the drug should be approved to begin with. The FDA should never have approved the Alzheimer’s disease drugs aducanumab (Aduhelm) and lecanemab (Leqembi). It should not make the same mistake a third time by approving donanemab.

“All three drugs have the same problem: their purported benefits in slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s disease do not outweigh their substantial health risks, including brain swelling and bleeding. Fortunately, aducanumab was little used and is being withdrawn from the U.S. market.

“Although patients with Alzheimer’s disease and their families are desperate for effective treatments, donanemab is not the answer, and should not be approved.”

The post FDA Should Not Approve Flawed Alzheimer’s Disease Drug Donanemab appeared first on Public Citizen.

“Over the past 50 years, setting fuel economy standards has been one of the most significant actions the United States has taken to reduce fossil fuel dependence and save drivers money directly, while leading to additional health benefits from cleaner air.

“Unfortunately, the final CAFE standards fall short of maximizing benefits of both. While these rules deliver $48 billion in net social benefits, there were stronger, technologically feasible alternatives that would have done much better. The final rules aren’t the strong, progressive standards needed to deliver the most fuel efficient cars that save consumers money and drive down toxic vehicle pollution harming public health. Rather, they continue incremental change at a moment that urgently requires climate leadership that addresses the devastating harms fossil fuels pose to our health and our future.”

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The post Finalized Fuel Efficiency Standards Needed to Drive Down Pollution from Vehicle appeared first on Public Citizen.

The authors — physicians affiliated with Harvard Medical School, the City University of New York’s Hunter College, and the Public Citizen Health Research Group — analyzed data from Congress’ official Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), Medicare’s Trustees, and other sources to estimate how much Medicare would have saved if enrollees in privatized Medicare plans had instead remained in traditional Medicare, and how much Medicare Advantage plans used for their administrative overhead, from 2007-2023.

The researchers found that the insurers pocketed 97% — $592 billion — of Medicare’s overpayments for their overhead and profits, which consume 14% of their total revenues, seven-fold more than the 2% overhead in the traditional Medicare program.

The authors call privatized Medicare a “failed experiment” that should be abolished, noting that the savings should be used to expand benefits and lower out-of-pocket costs for all Medicare beneficiaries.

“Medicare Advantage is a bad deal for taxpayers,” said lead author Dr. Adam Gaffney, a Harvard pulmonary and critical care physician practicing at the Cambridge Health Alliance. “Money that could be used to eliminate all copayments or shore up Medicare’s Trust Fund is instead lining insurers’ pockets. And the private insurers keep Medicare Advantage enrollees from getting needed care by erecting bureaucratic hurdles like prior authorizations and payment denials.”

The JAMA IM article, “Less Care at Higher Cost — The Medicare Advantage Paradox,” details how private insurers have exploited loopholes in Medicare’s complex payment rules for decades to extract overpayments. The federal government pays insurance companies a lump sum for each patient its Medicare Advantage plans sign up, with the amount of the lump sum based on enrollees’ “risk scores,” which the government calculates from diagnosis codes that the plans submit. The risk scores are meant to predict how much care enrollees will need. But research has repeatedly shown that the private plans game the system by cherry-picking the healthiest seniors to enroll, and then exaggerating how sick they are by so-called “upcoding,” i.e. padding enrollees’ medical charts with long lists of diagnosis codes that do not require specific treatment, jacking-up the risk score and hence the government’s lump-sum payment to the plan.

According to the JAMA IM article, privatized Medicare plans often refuse to cover providers that high-cost patients need, such as specialized cancer hospitals or psychiatrists; restrict access to drugs and treatments; and pressure patients’ doctors to curtail expensive care. As a result, the privatized plans spend, on average, 9% less on medical services (including the extra benefits they promise) than traditional Medicare spends for comparable patients.

“Medicare Advantage plans have, in effect, stolen hundreds of billions from taxpayers,” says David Himmelstein, a study co-author who is a Distinguished Professor at CUNY’s Hunter College, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and a Research Associate at Public Citizen. “And the private plans’ schemes also raise seniors’ Part B Medicare premiums. Even seniors who don’t choose to enroll in Medicare Advantage are subsidizing the private plans’ profits.”

*          *          *          *          *          *

“Less Care at Higher Cost — The Medicare Advantage Paradox,” Adam Gaffney, MD, MPH; Steffie Woolhandler, MD, MPH; David U. Himmelstein, MD.  JAMA Internal Medicine. 2024.

The post Private Insurers Bilked Taxpayers Out of More than a Half-Trillion Dollars Between 2007 and 2023 appeared first on Public Citizen.

By the company’s own accounts, Voice Mode is designed to lead users to feel as though they are interacting with a genuine human. AI systems that mimic humans can be used to impersonate real people, manipulate consumer choices, invade user privacy, and induce unearned trust. 

“Your rush to disseminate this technology is dangerous, unnecessary, and inconsistent with OpenAI’s purported priority in advancing AI safety,” the letter reads. “[N]othing in what we’ve seen suggests your safety testing and outside review grapples adequately with the enormous risks Voice Mode presents. Given the stakes, we find it impossible to believe that internal testing, with limited external review, can possibly justify the massive social experiment you are poised to inflict on society.”

“Voice Mode may be the most extreme example of AI anthropomorphism in existence,” said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen and co-author of the letter. “Everything about Voice Mode seems designed to lure users into feeling like they are interacting with a genuine human. OpenAI’s rush to unleash this technology is dangerous, unnecessary, and inconsistent with its purported mission of advancing AI safety.”

“It’s noteworthy that Google – a for-profit company that, unlike OpenAI, isn’t governed by a non-profit with a safety mandate – consciously chose not to adopt maximally human-like voices for its AI assistant,” said Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen and co-author of the letter. “If OpenAI’s Voice Mode gains traction and popularity, it will be difficult for Google and other leading AI companies to avoid releasing their own anthropomorphic AI voice assistants. There’s still time to put this genie back in the bottle, but not for long.”

The post OpenAI Should Suspend Voice Mode appeared first on Public Citizen.