Insights

New York – January 16, 2024: Linda Malek, Jason Johnson and Blaze Waleski are joining Crowell & Moring’s Health Care and Privacy & Cybersecurity groups and will be based in the New York office.

The appropriate use of AI tools during the claims review process continues to be a major topic of debate within the health care industry — but in recent weeks, emerging litigation has inspired critics to turn their attention specifically to the technology’s application within federal health programs. On March 25, 2026, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), citing the agency’s alleged failure to answer a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records the EFF believes will provide crucial insight into the design, safeguards, vendor relationships, and real-world performance of the Medicare Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction (WISeR) Model, CMS’s  AI-driven prior authorization pilot program for certain Medicare services.

On March 12, the California Consumer Privacy Protection Agency (“Agency”) announced it had entered into a settlement (“Settlement”) with American Honda Motor Company (“Honda”) to resolve the Agency’s claims that Honda violated the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). The total fine to be paid by Honda is $632,500. The investigation came out of the Agency’s Enforcement Division’s focused review of privacy practices of connected vehicles and related technologies announced in July 2023. That review highlighted vehicles with embedded features such as location sharing, smartphone integration, and cameras, and we expect more automotive related Agency settlements to be issued in the near future.