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Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Uber found not liable in first US trial over driver sexual assault claims

Uber is not liable for the sexual assault of a woman who said she was attacked by her driver on a ride she ordered from the ridesharing app, a California jury said on Tuesday, according to an attorney for the plaintiff.

At the end of a three-week civil trial in San Francisco Superior Court, the jury found that Uber was negligent in terms of the measures it put in place to protect the anonymous woman’s safety, but found that the negligence was not a substantial factor in causing the woman’s harm, according to Celine Cutter, one of her lawyers.

The case was the first to go to trial out of more than 500 lawsuits consolidated in California state court.

There are also more than 2,500 lawsuits making similar claims that have been centralized in a federal court in California.

The woman, who went by Jessica C. at trial, sued in 2021, claiming she was assaulted by an Uber driver in 2016.

During the ride, her driver pulled off on a side street, restraining, groping and kissing her, according to her attorneys.

William Levin and Laurel Simes, two of the lawyers who represented her at trial, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Uber has worked for years to raise the bar on safety, and will continue to do so in the years ahead,” an Uber spokesperson said in a statement.

The woman’s lawsuit was chosen to serve as the first “bellwether” for the state court litigation. In litigation with many plaintiffs asserting similar claims, bellwether trials are used to test the claims and establish what they may be worth.

Judges may use the outcome of the trial to manage the remaining cases, or lawyers can use them to inform settlement negotiations.

The woman’s attorneys had asked the jury for between $175,000 and $1.2 million in compensatory damages for each year of her life, suggesting larger figures for the years closest to the assault.

They did not suggest a number for punitive damages.

SAFETY PRACTICES IN THE SPOTLIGHT

The lawsuits allege Uber was aware it had a problem with drivers assaulting riders, but kept data on how many assaults took place from the public and did not take action to address the issue.

The plaintiffs have argued that Uber knew that things like assigning female riders to female drivers or requiring dash cams to record driver and passenger interactions would reduce assaults, but failed to broadly implement such programs.

Uber has maintained it should not be liable for criminal conduct by the drivers it connects with passengers, and that its background checks and disclosures about assaults were sufficient.

The lawsuits threaten to reopen wounds from Uber’s early years, when the company was dogged by safety controversies, allegations of lax driver vetting, and a culture critics said prioritized growth over protecting passengers.

The company has made safety a central talking point in recent years, publishing US Safety Reports that detail reported sexual assaults, rolling out features such as in-app ride verification, video and audio recording of rides, anomaly detection, and partnering with survivor advocacy groups to reform driver training.

Uber has also touted the formation of a Safety Advisory Board chaired by former US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, and pledged $10 million through its “Driving Change” initiative to support organizations working to end gender-based violence.

Despite these measures, Uber’s safety reputation has remained fragile. In its latest safety report published last year, covering the 2021–2022 period, Uber said reports of serious sexual assault on its platform have fallen by 44% since its first report in 2017–2018.

But with thousands of cases still documented, critics say systemic risks remain.

Prompted by an August New York Times report on the issue, a US House of Representatives subcommittee sent a letter last week to Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi seeking information on the company’s protocols for responding to and preventing sexual assaults on its rides.

https://nypost.com/2025/10/01/business/uber-not-liable-for-california-woman-sexual-assault-by-driver/

Illegal-immigrant trucker ‘No Name Given’ mocks US law — and puts us in grave danger

Oklahoma cops seized a New York commercial driver's license from an illegal immigrant that had the name "No Name Given."

On Monday, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt tweeted a picture of a New York state commercial driver’s license his officers seized during an “enforcement action” on an interstate highway.

The name on this official state document, found on one of 125 illegal-immigrant drivers apprehended by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol: “No Name Given.”

No city or state suffered more on 9/11, but this single incident shows how even the Empire State has forgotten the lessons of that horrible day — and how New York’s solicitousness for illegal immigrants is setting America up for a tragic replay.

All but one of the 19 illegal aliens who carried out those attacks in 2001 had some type of US-issued identification document.

As Richard Barth, then assistant secretary for policy development at the Department of Homeland Security, told the Senate in March 2007, the terrorists found it easy to fraudulently obtain driver’s licenses and state-issued IDs.

Take Hani Hanjour, the Saudi national who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and flew it into the Pentagon that morning, killing 184 innocents. He had IDs from three different states.

Those US-issued IDs, Barth noted, “enabled the hijackers to maneuver throughout the United States in order to plan and execute critical elements of their mission” — allowing them to “rent cars, travel, take flying lessons and board airplanes.”

“The 9/11 hijackers evidently believed that holding driver’s licenses and ID cards would allow them to operate freely in our country,” he chillingly concluded. “And they were right.”

The bipartisan 9/11 commission, tasked with investigating those attacks and making recommendations to ensure they could never be replicated, recognized that easy access to domestic IDs created an unacceptable vulnerability to our homeland.

In their final report, the commissioners advised the federal government to set stringent new standards for driver’s licenses.

“Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft,” they explained.

“At many entry points to vulnerable facilities … sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists.”

In response, Congress passed the REAL ID Act of 2005.

Among other things, it established verification requirements that states must follow in issuing licenses and other IDs that can be used for federal purposes — like boarding aircraft and entering federal buildings — and mandated that certain information appear on those documents.

Including, at section 202(b)(1): “The person’s full legal name.”

The image that Stitt tweeted shows a purportedly REAL ID-compliant New York state CDL, identifiable by the star in its upper right-hand corner.

And yet that document was issued to “No Name Given.”

Perhaps the Given family decided to pull the cruelest possible prank on their newborn child and christened him “No Name.”

More likely, though, a New York Department of Motor Vehicles clerk issued what’s supposed to be among the most secure documents in our nation — an ID allowing the bearer to enter a nuclear facility — to an individual who failed to provide that most rudimentary identifier, a full legal name.

Worse is the fact that this is not a simple ID, but rather a commercial driver’s license.

The 9/11 hijackers had to overpower flight crews and steer massive aircraft at high rates of speed to commit their attacks.

Think of the carnage a malevolent trucker with the wrong cargo could wreak.

There’s a reason that semis on our highways are emblazoned with hazmat placards like “Flammable Gas,” “Explosives” and “Radioactive”: They warn other drivers to steer clear or risk calamity.

But what if calamity on a massive scale, impacting tens of thousands of our citizens, is the reason the driver is barreling down the highway?

That’s not a “bad commute” — it’s a national disaster.

A goal of the REAL ID Act was to ensure that only US citizens and legal immigrants could obtain compliant IDs.

New York, having decided it can ignore our immigration laws, has now apparently set its sights on bypassing other federal mandates as well.

Until this issue is resolved, President Trump would be within his rights to bar travelers from using New York state “REAL IDs” when attempting to board aircraft or enter federally protected facilities.

There’s no reason for “No Name Given” to have a REAL ID commercial driver’s license — and New Yorkers, of all people, should understand why.

Andrew Arthur, the fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, drafted the Real ID Act of 2005.

https://nypost.com/2025/09/30/opinion/illegal-immigrant-trucker-no-name-given-reveals-grave-danger/

Kimmel has nothing on Wikipedia when it comes to misinforming people

Jimmy Kimmel has been accused of abusing the publicly subsidized airwaves with his lies and propaganda, but the two million viewers he reaches each night is a pittance compared to the hundreds of millions each month who think they’re getting unbiased information from Wikipedia.

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, who no longer has ties to the site, recently shocked Tucker Carlson in an interview when he showed that the web-based encyclopedia doesn’t permit its editors to cite news sources it considers “unreliable.”

Indeed, the universally referenced site ruthlessly censors conservative voices — openly — while giving liberal and far left sources a seal of approval.

CNN and MSNBC, chief purveyors of the Russia hoax, are marked with the green checkmark that says they are “reliable.”

Mother Jones, which called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot a “heavily armed insurrection,” is graded incorruptible, as is New York Magazine, which ran a 2018 cover story claiming President Donald Trump has been a Russian secret agent, code named “Krasnov,” since 1987.

Even Qatari propaganda outlet Al Jazeera, banned in the Arab world because of its pro-Muslim Brotherhood outlook, is counted as an A-OK source for Wikipedia entries.

Meanwhile, The New York Post is smeared as “generally unreliable.” Fox News is also off limits, along with The Federalist, The Epoch Times, The Daily Caller and other outlets.

And here’s the scariest part: Not only do masses of people unwittingly turn to Wikipedia for unbiased information, AI is trained on it.

Powerful bots like Grok, Chat GPT and Gemini siphon up huge swaths of text from Wikipedia and then spit it out as though it’s neutral and authoritative.

It’s not. It is trimmed and hewed to fit a particular leftist narrative that has excised a huge territory of conservative thought and reportage from its source-stream.

All of which distorts and corrupts fair public discourse.

Yes, every reputable information source has to impose some minimum guidelines and guardrails, but not rules based on political leaning.

If Wikipedia continues to adhere by such blatantly biased standards, it will invite guardrails — for itself.

https://nypost.com/2025/09/30/opinion/jimmy-kimmel-has-nothing-on-wikipedia-when-it-comes-to-misinforming-people/

FDA won't accept new drug applications during government shutdown

The Food and Drug Administration, already reeling from layoffs and leadership changes under the Trump Administration, warned that the government shutdown will delay or pause important work at the agency.
In a memo released before the shutdown began, the FDA said it expects to retain 86% of its staff, or 13,872 employees. The agency can continue reviewing existing applications for products, including drugs and medical devices that are funded by user fees, but will not be able to accept new submissions.
The FDA will also stop many regulatory activities that don’t address “imminent threats to the safety of human life.” For instance, food safety efforts will be reduced during the shutdown, and the agency won’t be able to support much of the work done to protect Americans from unsafe and ineffective compounded drugs, the FDA said.

A shutdown of a few days or a week likely won’t have a major impact on Americans or on the health-care industry. But an extended standoff between Republicans and Democrats over the budget would affect research funding, health insurance negotiations and eventually the flow of new medical products onto the market, analysts said.

While the agency emphasized that most of its employees will stay on the job, the total number of workers is less than its previous contingency plan before President Trump took office. That plan called for 77% of the FDA’s staff, or 15,223 employees, to be retained during a shutdown.

The numbers “reflect the impact of the significant job cuts at FDA early in the Trump Administration, with many non-user fee positions already eliminated,” TD Cowen analyst Rick Weissenstein wrote in a note to clients. Still, he said, the earlier actions mean the agency probably won’t be significantly impacted now if Trump follows through on his threat to fire more of the federal workforce because of the shutdown.

The budget impasse comes during a year that has already featured much uncertainty for the industries regulated by the FDA. In addition to layoffs throughout the Health and Human Services Department, many key officials have either resigned or been forced out of the FDA, thinning expertise and heightening scrutiny of the agency’s ability to complete reviews on time.

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has said that the “trains are running on time” at the agency. But there have been signs of slippage, with key products facing extensions in review times and at least one case of a delay because of “resource constraints.”

https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/fda-government-shutdown-new-drug-applications-reviews/761576/

CVS Offers $200 Wegovy Copay in Bid to Expand Coverage

CVS Health Corp.’s drug benefits unit is trying to entice health insurance plans to cover Wegovy, Novo Nordisk A/S’s pricey weight-loss shot, for more patients by allowing them to charge copays as high as $200.

It’s the latest move by pharmacy benefit managers, which negotiate drug prices on behalf of health plans, to deal with the surging demand for weight-loss medicines. The copay option would take effect starting next year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-01/cvs-dangles-200-copays-for-wegovy-in-bid-to-expand-coverage

Enanta upped to Buy from Hold by Jefferies

Target $20

https://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=ENTA&p=d

UnitedHealth, CVS Health, Humana scale back Medicare Advantage offerings

A confluence of factors is leading to a significant shake-up in the Medicare Advantage landscape in 2025. Key elements include the redesign of the Part D benefit due to regulatory changes included in the Inflation Reduction Act, lower-than-expected benchmark rates, the transition to the v28 Risk Adjustment model, and rising medical trends. These warning signs about the financial sustainability of benefit-rich Medicare Advantage plans have prompted several insurers to pull back in 2025, resulting in product closures and exits from markets. Despite these disruptions, consumers will still have a broad range of choices and can shop for alternative products.

Decisions around 2025 offerings notwithstanding, insurers must take a hard look at their Medicare Advantage strategy if they are going to ensure long-term viability. We highlighted a few key factors in this previous Oliver Wyman Health article.

Plan Exits and Closures

More than 1.8 million Medicare Advantage members are enrolled 2024 plans that will not be offered in 2025. A few things jump out from the data:

Approximately 1.3 million of these members are enrolled in PPO plans, representing 70% of those affected by plan exits
Humana, CVS Aetna, and UnitedHealthcare collectively impact over 1.2 million members due to their plan closures
Eighteen marketing brands — including Premera Blue Cross and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City — are exiting the market entirely in 2025, affecting tens of thousands of members

Major Enrollment Impacts from Product Closures from National, For-Profit Carriers

Exhibit 1: Plan closures across three companies are causing the most disruption

Notes: Includes individuals in non-SNP, non-Group plans

The loss of plans offered by Humana, CVS Aetna, and UnitedHealthcare leaves a large hole to fill. Humana will have the most significant impact on its members, with over 500,000 of 2024 members enrolled in products that will be closed in 2025. CVS Aetna follows closely, with an estimated 450,000 members affected, and UnitedHealthcare ranks third, with over 250,000 members enrolled in products that will not be offered in 2025.

It's important to highlight that these plan exits reflect members who will not be automatically moved into other products, even if one was available. While these plan exits may seem alarming, carriers in many of these markets have introduced new products or have other products that members can switch to for 2025. This will enable members affected by the plan closures to potentially choose alternative options within the carrier’s portfolio. However, this still results in disruptions to members' experience and continuity of coverage, and the risk that these members will switch to other carriers.

Consumer-Facing MA Brands Exiting the Medicare Advantage Market Entirely

A total of 18 marketing organizations announced their departure from Medicare Advantage. Notable exits include Premera Blue Cross, affecting over 30,000 members in Washington, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, impacting a similar number in Missouri and Kansas. Additionally, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare’s exit will affect over 10,000 members. Despite these closures, the overall impact on the market is expected to remain minimal, with brand exits accounting for less than 1% of total enrollment, approximately 150,000 members. For some of these brands, the parent organization remains in the market under a different marketing name, so the closure is more of a member-facing brand impact than true-scale plan exit.

Disproportionate Exits of PPO Plans

Members enrolled in PPO plans will be more significantly affected than those in HMO/HMO-POS plans, with approximately 1.3 million members (70%) in PPO plans in 2024 enrolled in products that will not be offered in 2025 — and not crosswalked — compared to around 530,000 members (30%) in HMO plans.

Diving into this further, organizations have made specific decisions to eliminate their PPO plan options in certain states and counties. This reflects a broader trend among insurers that are reassessing product offerings and adjusting service areas. Organizations have made surgical decisions to eliminate their PPO plan options in specific states and counties.

For example, of the approximately 250,000 members that will be impacted by UnitedHealthcare’s plan closures in 2025, about 185,000 were in PPO plans in 2024. Around 30,000 of these 185,000 members — about 15% — will have no alternative PPO options in their county because UnitedHealthcare is exiting its PPO plans in 38 counties. For the 85% of members, other UnitedHealthcare PPO options will be available in the counties, but they were not crosswalked.

Organizations have not removed their HMO plans to the same extent. Notable HMO exits include Humana leaving Delaware and South Dakota and CVS exiting Idaho. Centene has also made smaller exits from states like Alabama and Massachusetts, but these changes are far less widespread than those affecting PPO plans.

The closure and exit of more PPO plans compared to HMO plans for 2025 could be driven by financial viability issues, as PPOs tend to have higher costs, with plans that are harder to manage and ensure quality, and overall, less predictable revenue streams.

Keeping a Close Eye on Member Movement

It’s critical that insurers watch how plan switching, and consumer shopping behavior is impacted by this disruption. Will some consumers exit Medicare Advantage entirely? What strategies — if any — will remaining carriers implement to attract members from exiting plans, particularly in the PPO segment? Will the remaining plans end up exceeding growth targets by virtue of being in a market that other brands exited? And how will that impact their business?

We expect this to be the beginning of a two-to-three-year disruption cycle and plans will continue to make significant changes to their product portfolio and service areas in 2026 — especially as we see how the annual enrollment period and 2025 plan profitability shape up.

https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/perspectives/health/2024/oct/plan-exits-cause-shakeup-in-medicare-advantage-offerings.html