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OSPIRG Foundation has prepared this guide to help you understand how you can get health coverage if you’re at risk of losing employer sponsored insurance, what special protections have been created for insured consumers in Oregon, what insurance coverage can help you with during the outbreak, and what benefits are available to all Oregonians under emergency measures.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum is calling on the country’s top online marketplaces to crack down on price gouging amidst the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Rosenblum joined a bipartisan group of 33 attorneys general, led by Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro along with co-leading Attorneys General Hector Balderas (NM), William Tong (CT), and T.J. Donovan (VT), in sending a letter today urging the companies -- Amazon, Craigslist, eBay, Facebook and Walmart -- to quickly implement preventative measures on their platforms to ensure that consumers don’t get taken advantage of during this public health crisis.
Empty store shelves and out of stock signs are becoming more common in America as the Coronavirus reaches the nation’s shores. While many regions have yet to declare a state of emergency, a new analysis by U.S. PIRG Education Fund revealed the 30-day average price of surgical masks and hand sanitizer 18.5 percent higher than the three month average. High prices during February were at times more than double the average cost of the same product over a 90-day time period.
Amazon may monitor its marketplace for price gouging, but a new analysis by U.S. PIRG Education Fund has revealed that these checks don’t always succeed in preventing significant price hikes. With so many people worried about Coronavirus, the consumer advocacy organization looked at the prices for two types of increasingly popular products: hand sanitizers and surgical masks.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 48 million Americans contract a food borne illness yearly with 128,000 people hospitalized and 3,000 dead as a result of these illnesses.
The food safety system uses two lines of defense to help prevent this threat. First a series of inspections and enforcement measures identify hazardous products before they make it to store shelves and Americans’ plates. Second, when a foodborne pathogen or other threats are still sold for consumption, the recall system attempts to remove the food from store shelves as quickly as possible and alerts consumers about the hazard. While not all illnesses are connected to a source, removing contaminated food from the market helps protect the public.
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