Current Events

People who bought policies from Centene, a large for-profit health insurance company, filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday claiming the company does not provide adequate access to doctors in 15 states.

“Members have difficulty finding — and in many cases cannot find — medical providers,” who will accept patients covered under policies sold by Centene, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington State.

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Two Senate Democrats are proposing large new fines for credit reporting agencies that lose consumers’ personal information in data breaches, according to a bill they introduced on Wednesday.

The bill would impose potentially significant fines against companies like Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian if their cyber security fails to ward off hackers trying to obtain sensitive data. It also would establish a new Office of Cybersecurity at the Federal Trade Commission, and charge it with monitoring cyber security at those companies.

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In Bergen County, New Jersey, a jury handed down a $15 million verdict against Ethicon, a company owned by Johnson and Johnson, based on defective pelvic mesh implants that caused plaintiff Elizabeth Hrymoc chronic pain.

Pelvic mesh implants are used to treat women who have stress, incontinence, and pelvic organ prolapse.

Hyrmoc claimed that Ethicon designed the pelvic mesh implants in a defective manner. She believed that the company knew it would cause problems but put it on the market anyway without adequately warning of the health risks.

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The three major U.S. credit bureaus have been hit with proposed class actions in Manhattan federal court this week accusing them of reporting old, vacated civil judgments on consumers’ credit reports without checking that the information was current, violating federal and New York state laws.

The lawsuits against Experian, Equifax and TransUnion seek actual, statutory and punitive damages for thousands of New York state residents who allegedly had vacated judgments misreported on their credit reports. Judgments, which are awarded to creditors and debt collectors who sue for unpaid debt, can hurt credit scores and raise a consumer’s borrowing costs

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At least two people were killed and dozens sickened by E. coli outbreaks in Canada and the United States that the authorities in Canada have linked to romaine lettuce.

Health officials in the United States are not yet ready to blame the American outbreak to the leafy green. Still, they say, the Canadian finding has proved helpful and both outbreaks appear to have been caused by related strains of the bacteria, suggesting the possibility of a shared source.

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Takata’s cover-up that as many as 70 million of its airbags were potentially lethal was among the worst cases of corporate misconduct in last year, according to the American Association for Justice.

AAJ, a nonprofit group of plaintiff attorneys, recently released its year-end 20-page report. It took aim at corporations for putting profits over safety and at the limited regulations to keep them in line.

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People should avoid eating romaine lettuce amid an outbreak of a dangerous strain of E. coli bacteria that has sickened 58 people in the US – including New York — and Canada, according to Consumer Reports.

The consumer advocacy group called on the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to do more to warn people about the dangerous outbreak.

Five people have been hospitalized in the US and one has died, according to the CDC. In Canada, one person has died.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday issued a recall of a heart device made by a unit of Johnson & Johnson due to a faulty valve.

The valve, which prevents blood from flowing back through it, is part of a device used to insert and position cardiovascular catheters in the heart.

About 110 Agilis Steerable Introducer Sheath devices made and distributed between Jan.
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The massive Equifax data breach, which compromised the identities of more than 145 million Americans, prompted a telling response from Congress: It did nothing.

Some industry leaders and lawmakers thought September’s revelation of the massive intrusion — which took place months after the credit reporting agency failed to act on a warning from the Homeland Security Department — might be the long-envisioned incident that prompted Congress to finally fix the country’s confusing and ineffectual data security laws.

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Basic steps to prevent infections — such as washing hands, isolating contagious patients and keeping ill nurses and aides from coming to work — are routinely ignored in the nation’s nursing homes, endangering residents and spreading hazardous germs.

A Kaiser Health News analysis of four years of federal inspection records shows 74% of nursing homes have been cited for lapses in infection control — more than for any other type of health violation. In California, health inspectors have cited all but 133 of the state’s 1,251 homes.

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LOS ANGELES — Wednesday Apple admitted that it deliberately slowed down older iPhones to prevent unexpected shutdowns when the batteries were worn out.

Thursday, the lawsuits began.

A proposed class-action breach-of-contract suit was filed by two consumers, via a Los Angeles lawyer, saying they never consented to allow Apple to slow their older iPhones.

"As a result of Defendant’s wrongful actions, Plaintiffs and Class Members had their phone slowed down, and thereby it interfered with Plaintiffs’ and Class Members’ use or possession of their iPhones," according to the lawsuit, which has been posted online by a New York CBS TV station.

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