Current Events in March 2023

If you bought a vehicle because it was an Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) Top Safety Pick, it might no longer fall into the category of the safest cars on the road.

IIHS is raising the requirements for its Top Safety Pick and Top Safety Pick+ awards for 2023. The new requirements will demand better side crash protection and improved pedestrian crash prevention systems. It’s also raising the bar for what are considered the safest headlights.

As a result of the change, IIHS says only 48 models qualify for 2023 awards. Of those, 28 earn Top Safety Pick+ and 20 earn Top Safety Pick. 

The change is eliminating many models from the rankings. In 2022, before the changes, there were 101 winners, including 65 earning the higher-tier Top Safety Pick+. IIHS did not identify the models that have been downgraded. However, you can check the rankings here to see if your model still has the safety rating.

“The number of winners is smaller this year because we’re challenging automakers to build on the safety gains they’ve already achieved,” said IIHS President David Harkey. “These models are true standouts in both crashworthiness and crash prevention.”

Toyota and Honda stand out

Toyota has the most 2023 awards overall and the most awards in each category. Nine Toyota models achieved Top Safety Pick+ and six more are in the Top Safety Pick category.

Honda, which includes the Acura and Honda brands, is next with six Top Safety Pick+ and two Top Safety Pick awards. Mazda earned six Top Safety Pick awards.

When it comes to headlights, requirements for the base award have gotten more stringent. Previously, a vehicle could qualify by offering at least one trim level with available acceptable or good headlights, while winners of the “plus” award needed to have them standard across all trims. For 2023, both awards require standard “acceptable” or “good” headlights.

To earn either a Top Safety Pick+ or Top Safety Pick designation, a car or truck must earn “good” ratings in the driver-side small overlap front, passenger-side small overlap front and original moderate overlap front tests.

The roof strength, head restraint and vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention evaluations are no longer part of the award criteria, IIHS said.

This statistic might want to make you throw your computer or smartphone in the trash can but you need to hear it: A frightening 91% of all Americans are between “moderate to extreme risk” of digital crimes.

And if that number didn’t move you, let’s try this one: Federal Trade Commission (FTC) data show consumers lost nearly $8.8 billion to scams in 2022.

According to a new Digital Crime Index from Aura, a firm engaged in intelligent safety for consumers, not only are few of us safe, but some of us are in even great peril.

Aura’s researchers found that demographics that have become extremely susceptible to digital crimes are Black Americans, women, parents, veterans/active-duty military, and members of the Gen-Z generation.

The data show:

•  Compared to those without children, parents carry a bigger financial toll from being a victim of a digital crime -- seeing 15 times greater loss with an average of $24,188 lost per incident. And Aura says the finger needs to be pointed at all those devices parents have around the home. On average, parents have three more devices in their home compared to most Americans.

• Gen-Z faces a significant risk of digital crime compared to other generations surveyed, which rank at high risk. When Gen-Z respondents were asked if they protect themselves from digital crimes, only 52% said yes. Gen-Z’s older sibling Gen-X does the best of the four generations surveyed, with 68% saying they protect themselves digitally.

• Black Americans are five times more likely than White Americans to be at severe risk of a digital crime.

• Even though men statistically have more violent crimes committed against them, Aura found women are at an elevated risk of a digital crime and stand to lose 6 times more financially. Perhaps what is most alarming is the difference between the average loss for a woman who falls victim to a digital crime vs. a man. On average, women lose over $10,000 more than men per crime. Just ask Rebecca…

• One in every two veterans and active-duty service members who have experienced digital crime have been victims of more than one type of digital crime. Most of those were victims of a government data breach, the researchers said.

"There's no question that technology has enabled incredible progress in society and in our individual lives, but by oversharing online and over-trusting our digital interactions we're putting ourselves and our families at extreme risk," said Aura founder & CEO Hari Ravichandran. "In fact, the Index shows that 60% of Americans have already reported being a victim of at least one online crime and that number is growing every day.”

AI could make things worse, too

With all the hoopla surrounding AI – artificial intelligence – that 91% high-water mark could go even higher. In fact, it’s already starting to show its ugly side with more fake job scams starting to emerge.

"Consumers should be aware that as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, it may be used by marketers in ways that put their privacy at risk,” Nicky Watson, founder of Cassie, a pioneer in consent and preference management, told ConsumerAffairs.

She said that AI-powered search engines will be able to gather and share more data about consumers than ever before. And, since no one’s trying to regulate AI, Watson says the prospect of those search engine companies selling large sets of consumer data to other companies could lead to real-world consequences for consumers. 

“For example, imagine a consumer is concerned about a health issue, so they search the issue online and visit websites relating to the condition. If an AI-powered search engine company sells that consumer’s online activity to a health insurance company, data about the consumer could impact the cost of their health insurance premiums,” she suggested.

“Consumers should proceed with caution when using AI tools and they should think about the long-term unintended consequences of how their data could be used against them.”

After consumer advocates complained loudly that the cost of insulin, used to manage diabetes, had skyrocketed in recent years, a major drug company says it will slash the price it charges.

Eli Lilly has announced it will cut insulin prices by 70% and cap patient out-of-pocket costs at $35 a month.

Medical researchers reported last month that between 2001 and 2018, the average list price of insulin had increased by 11% every year. On an annual basis, the cost was approaching $6,000 every 12 months.

That prompted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last June to issue a policy statement, noting that it was looking into "complaints about rebates and fees paid by drug manufacturers to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and other intermediaries to favor high-cost drugs.”

Lilly said the 70% price cut applies to its most commonly prescribed insulins and is an expansion of its Insulin Value Program that caps patient out-of-pocket costs at $35 or less per month. Lilly said it is taking these actions to make it easier to access Lilly insulin which is a crucial part of the treatment and management of diabetes.

Specifics

Specifically, Lilly said it is:

• Cutting the list price of its non-branded insulin, Insulin Lispro Injection 100 units/mL, to $25 a vial. Effective May 1, 2023, it will be the lowest list-priced mealtime insulin available, and less than the price of a Humalog vial in 1999.

• Cutting the list price of Humalog (insulin lispro injection) 100 units/mL1, Lilly's most commonly prescribed insulin, and Humulin (insulin human) injection 100 units/mL2 by 70%, effective in Q4 2023.

• Launching Rezvoglar (insulin glargine-aglr) injection, a basal insulin that is biosimilar to, and interchangeable with, Lantus® (insulin glargine) injection, for $92 per five pack of KwikPens®, a 78% discount to Lantus, effective April 1, 2023.

"While the current healthcare system provides access to insulin for most people with diabetes, it still does not provide affordable insulin for everyone and that needs to change," said David Ricks, Lilly's Chair and CEO. "The aggressive price cuts we're announcing today should make a real difference for Americans with diabetes.”

Ricks says the $35 a month cap on out-of-pocket expenses for insulin will take effect right away while the announced price cuts work their way through the pharmacy system.

A 102-year-old drug

Diabetes was a fatal disease before insulin was discovered in 1921. Initially a cheap drug, costs have risen sharply in the past decade.

The Diabetes Research Institute estimates 34.2 million people, or 10.5% of the U.S. population, have diabetes. Patient advocacy groups welcomed Lilly’s announcement.

“We applaud Eli Lilly for taking the important step to limit cost-sharing for its insulin, and we encourage other insulin manufacturers to do the same,” said Chuck” Henderson, CEO of the American Diabetes Association (ADA). “While we have been able to help achieve significant progress on the issue of insulin affordability, including Medicare’s new out-of-pocket cost cap on insulin, state copay caps, and patient assistance developments from insulin manufacturers, we know that our work is not done.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently raised a few eyebrows with its ruling that plant-based products are milk.

Among those taking issue is Jim Mulhern, President and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation.

"We reject the agency’s circular logic that FDA’s past labeling enforcement inaction now justifies labeling such beverages 'milk' by designating a common and usual name,” he said. “Past inaction is poor precedent to justify present and future inaction."

As far healthful benefits are concerned, he said, "inconsistent concoctions of water, factory-processed powders and other additives simply don’t contain the same nutrition that milk provides."

Even the satirical online website The Onion got its licks in.

But now that the Feds have made their beliefs known, what are your “milk” choices? They appear to be many and varied.

You can throw away the days when your choices were limited to skimmed, semi-skimmed and full fat.

We now have all these:

• Oat Milk
• Soy Milk
• Potato Milk
• Coconut Milk
• Almond Milk
• Cashew Milk
• Rice Milk
• Hemp Milk
• Pea Milk
• Hazelnut Milk
• Macadamia Milk
• Tiger Nut Milk

Among the most popular

• Oat milk is made by soaking and blending whole oats with water and has a creamy texture with an unsurprisingly oaty taste. It's often fortified with vitamins and minerals such as calcium, vitamin D, and riboflavin, making it high in fiber.
• Soy milk uses, as you would surmise, soaked soybeans ground into a liquid and then boiled to form milk. It provides the necessary amino acids and has been linked to lowering blood pressure and bad cholesterol levels.
• Almond milk is among the most common nut milks around, created in a similar way to oat. It’s high in the antioxidant vitamin E, which helps keep skin healthy and strengthens the immune system.

Nutritional reckoning

To help consumers work all this out, the FDA is proposing new guidance that would require these products to have labels that indicate how these options are nutritionally different.

They would point out how vitamin or calcium levels in plant-based choices compare to the vitamin and calcium makeup of traditional milk options.

If you're counting calories, unsweetened almond milk is your best option -- only 13 calories per 100 ml. That’s followed by coconut milk with 14 calories per 100ml.

Unsweetened almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk, macadamia nut milk, hemp milk and pea milk are all keto-friendly but nutritional values may vary from brand to brand.

While mammal’s milks contain lactose, plant-based products don’t. But, if you're lactose intolerant, check out the product's ingredients just to be sure.

There’s growing evidence that U.S. consumers are feeling the lasting pinch of inflation, even as it wanes from its peak last year. Here’s some more: a ConsumerAffairs nationwide survey found 40% of consumers say they need a personal loan right now.

The need breakdown is even more illuminating. Only 26% of consumers said they have a discretionary need for the money, such as making a home improvement or paying travel expenses. 

All the rest have more basic needs for cash, with 32.5% of respondents saying they need the money just to pay bills. More than 12% said they needed to buy a car or make car repairs.

Of the people who needed a loan, 21.1% earn between $50,000 and $75,000 while 32.6% earn $75,000 or more.

The nationwide survey via Survey Monkey was part of an exclusive report from ConsumerAffairs researchers who also studied internal data from consumers. In addition, they analyzed Google search trends and found longer-term evidence of consumers’ growing need to take on debt to make ends meet. More than 88,100 consumers searched in November 2022 for “I need a personal loan now,” “need money now” and similar terms.

These searches rose 18% over 12 months and have risen 41% since November 2019, when 62,512 people typed in those keywords.

Living paycheck-to-paycheck

The report found good reason consumers are feeling the need for extra cash. Inflation has pushed consumer prices up 6.4% year-over-year, with higher costs for everything from food to gasoline to rent. 

If incomes stayed the same, simple math would suggest that a household would not be able to afford all the things it had purchased previously. Personal finance guru Suze Orman recently disclosed that a survey by her company, SecureSave, found that 74% of Americans were living paycheck-to-paycheck in November.

The ConsumerAffairs survey confirmed that about 60% of Americans found it more difficult or were unable to pay all monthly bills in the past year. Among those who said they needed a personal loan, that figure rose to over 75%.

The report analyzed responses collected from 247,700 consumers who, from March 2022 to January 2023, used a ConsumerAffairs online tool to get information about potential personal loan providers.

The survey found that 21.5% of consumers interested in a personal loan would use it to pay bills while 28.5% would use it to consolidate high-interest debt from credit cards. In recent months, the fraction of consumers who needed a loan to consolidate debt rose to over one-third. 

The nationwide growth in credit-card use to pay inflation-spiked bills and cover unexpected expenses is driving the need for lower-rate personal loans, the report found. 

Scammers may not know it, but the have picked a fight with the people who love “man’s best friend.” After last year’s “woof and poof” crime spree, doggy scammers are back.

According to TheDailyScam, the Reddit community has recently been barking loudly when one poster told their personal lost dog scam tale.

Reddit user Darwally’s narrative started when their family dog Abbott escaped its cage while on a cross-country trip. Devastated, the family took to plastering the town where their dog was lost with posters and putting something up on LostMyDoggie.com.

It worked! The next day Darwally got a message from someone claiming to have found her dog. But she was smart enough to recognize that she was being scammed.

“It was heartbreaking to realize I was being scammed and our dog is still lost,” she said. 

'I need you to verify a code'

Seems the scammer thought they’d try out the ‘ol “PIN scam” where they asked her to prove that she was the correct person claiming to have lost the dog he found. The crook said that he was sending her a “verification code” via text and all she needed to do was share that number back to him.

If the scammer had been successful, they could’ve put malware on her phone that could’ve enabled them to access her bank account, credit card account, or any number of things. 

“They could lock you out by turning off this authentication feature, or they could change the password, or they could set up email forwarding within your account without your knowledge,” the DailyScam warned.

“They can ransack your account, looking for information to monetize, including bank and credit card accounts. Never, ever give a verification code to anyone for any reason!  These codes are for your protection!

PIN scams are spreading from iPhones to Androids

As ConsumerAffairs reported earlier this week, iPhone users have been put on high alert that PIN scams are showing up on those devices everywhere. Unfortunately, as it turns out, Google Android phone owners aren’t safe, either.

9to5Google notes that the same trick thieves play on an iPhone can be used to break into an Android and make off with all the treasure trove of personal IDs, passwords, etc. that are part of someone’s Google account.

The best safety tip ConsumerAffairs found to prevent someone hacking into an Android phone is two-factor authentication. Similar to what Apple offers,  Google also offers “advanced protection” – its version of two-factor authentication – that gives Android users some comfort.