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Activists from the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion, take part in a protest march in St Ives, Cornwall on June 11, 2021, on the first day of the three-day G7 summit being held from 11-13 June. G7 leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the United States meet this weekend for the first time in nearly two years, for the three-day talks in Carbis Bay, Cornwall. (Photo by BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images)
Leaders of the seven richest countries per capita are meeting at the Group of 7's annual summit this weekend--and climate justice is explicitly on the agenda. That has never happened. How the G7 leaders respond to the climate justice challenge this weekend will shape the chances of success at November's global climate summit that United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres calls "our last opportunity" to defuse the climate emergency.
At issue are the promises that rich countries made in the 2015 Paris Agreement, promises that they have flagrantly violated.
"Twenty twenty-one is a make-it-or-break-it year," Guterres said in an interview this week with the global news consortium Covering Climate Now. "I think we are still on time, but when you are on the verge of the abyss, you need to make sure that the next step is in the right direction."
At issue are the promises that rich countries made in the 2015 Paris Agreement, promises that they have flagrantly violated. Most media attention has focused on G7 countries' pledges to cut emissions enough to limit global temperature rise to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and preferably to 1.5 C. Current policies and emissions trajectories instead put the earth on track for a 2.9 C increase by 2100, a de facto death sentence for millions of people and countless ecosystems, moving humanity further down the path to extinction. That disquieting prospect continues to spur grassroots protests against oil, coal, and gas development, including the Keystone XL pipeline in Canada whose owners officially canceled the project this week.
Equally important, though much less discussed, is rich countries' Paris Agreement pledge to provide $100 billion a year to help developing countries quit fossil fuels and protect against climate impacts. This obligation, which was to take effect in 2020, was grounded in the truism that climate change is overwhelmingly caused by the rich but disproportionately punishes the poor. Rich countries have not honored their $100 billion pledge either. Instead of $100 billion a year of climate aid, they have provided about $20 billion, according to an analysis that the global anti-poverty NGO Oxfam conducted of 2018 figures (the last year of authoritative data).
Boris Johnson, Britain's prime minister and host of this year's G7 summit, and Guterres have said they will press the other G7 leaders--US President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga--to make good on their Paris Agreement obligations. Doing so is a matter not only of justice, Guterres told Covering Climate Now, but also of establishing the trust between rich and poor countries, trust that Guterres believes is necessary in order for the COP 26 climate summit this November to succeed. G7 leaders must guarantee that they will provide the climate aid they promised, Guterres said, and "clarify how that $100 billion will be delivered."
Supplying climate aid is an act not of charity but rather of self-preservation, according to a landmark International Energy Agency report released last month. In order to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5 C, the IEA said, the world must halt all new fossil fuel development, and both developing and developed countries alike must shift rapidly to non-carbon energy. That shift will be "impossible" for developing countries, Guterres said, without sizable financial and technological help.
The climate crisis and the Covid pandemic share something big in common. "You can't protect yourself unless you protect everybody else," said Rachel Kyte, the World Bank Group's special representative to the Paris climate summit and now the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. To that end, G7 leaders need to make it clear at this weekend's summit that they "will share [their] vaccine surplus and share it now. Otherwise, we're going to have variants coming back and coming back, and we'll never escape." Likewise, rich countries must help "get the entire world off coal" if they themselves want to survive climate change, Kyte added. "It's one boat. You don't survive in your end of the boat if the other end of the boat is going underwater."
But rebuilding trust with developing nations is problematic given G7 countries' poor record on climate aid, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, who was instrumental in helping diplomats from the global South insert the 1.5 C target in the Paris Agreement. "It's the same seven countries that made that promise [of climate aid in the Paris Agreement], which they reneged on. So, if they're going to have any credibility or trust, they're going to have to deliver [the money] they were supposed to for 2020, and then there's another $100 billion due in 2021. The issue is the credibility of the [G7] leaders, and whether we can believe anything they say at all."
To hear rich countries tell it, they actually have done a pretty good job of fulfilling their climate aid obligations. Citing 2018 data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of 38 of the world's highest-income economies, rich countries gave roughly $79 billion in climate aid in 2018.
But Oxfam's analysis of the OECD data reveals that this $79 billion figure is wildly inflated and based on dodgy definitions and accounting tricks. Some 75 percent of the $79 billion were given as loans that must be repaid rather than outright grants, said Tracy Carty, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam who co-authored the Oxfam analysis. And some aid was for projects that only a very forgiving mind would consider climate-friendly. For example, Japan claimed that its investment in a new coal plant in Bangladesh, a country with some of the world's most vulnerable ecosystems, qualified as climate aid because the new plant was more efficient than older models.
What's more, only 20 to 25 percent of rich countries' aid helps poor countries protect themselves from the heat waves, droughts, storms, rising seas, and other impacts of rising temperatures. Instead, most aid has been aimed at reducing emissions in the biggest developing economies, such as China, India, South Africa, and Brazil, Huq said, "while only 20 percent has gone to the most vulnerable countries, like my country, Bangladesh, to adapt to the impacts of climate change." One reason is that investments "in renewable energy projects generate revenue that allows loans to be repaid"; giving poor people money to survive storms and floods does not. Highly vulnerable developing countries demand, Huq added, that half of all climate aid "should be for adaptation in the most vulnerable countries," and that such aid must come as grants, not loans.
If G7 leaders do not issue a credible guarantee this weekend that they will honor their climate aid and other Paris Agreement obligations, then the world is headed for failure at the make-or-break climate summit in November, Huq and Kyte said. "The nearest thing we have to global government are these seven big economies, and if they decide to do something, then that something gets done," Huq said. "So far, both with climate aid and Covid vaccinations, [the G7 leaders] see themselves as the leaders of their own countries and don't care about the rest of the world. And they think they're going to be safe. But they're not going to be safe."
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Leaders of the seven richest countries per capita are meeting at the Group of 7's annual summit this weekend--and climate justice is explicitly on the agenda. That has never happened. How the G7 leaders respond to the climate justice challenge this weekend will shape the chances of success at November's global climate summit that United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres calls "our last opportunity" to defuse the climate emergency.
At issue are the promises that rich countries made in the 2015 Paris Agreement, promises that they have flagrantly violated.
"Twenty twenty-one is a make-it-or-break-it year," Guterres said in an interview this week with the global news consortium Covering Climate Now. "I think we are still on time, but when you are on the verge of the abyss, you need to make sure that the next step is in the right direction."
At issue are the promises that rich countries made in the 2015 Paris Agreement, promises that they have flagrantly violated. Most media attention has focused on G7 countries' pledges to cut emissions enough to limit global temperature rise to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and preferably to 1.5 C. Current policies and emissions trajectories instead put the earth on track for a 2.9 C increase by 2100, a de facto death sentence for millions of people and countless ecosystems, moving humanity further down the path to extinction. That disquieting prospect continues to spur grassroots protests against oil, coal, and gas development, including the Keystone XL pipeline in Canada whose owners officially canceled the project this week.
Equally important, though much less discussed, is rich countries' Paris Agreement pledge to provide $100 billion a year to help developing countries quit fossil fuels and protect against climate impacts. This obligation, which was to take effect in 2020, was grounded in the truism that climate change is overwhelmingly caused by the rich but disproportionately punishes the poor. Rich countries have not honored their $100 billion pledge either. Instead of $100 billion a year of climate aid, they have provided about $20 billion, according to an analysis that the global anti-poverty NGO Oxfam conducted of 2018 figures (the last year of authoritative data).
Boris Johnson, Britain's prime minister and host of this year's G7 summit, and Guterres have said they will press the other G7 leaders--US President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga--to make good on their Paris Agreement obligations. Doing so is a matter not only of justice, Guterres told Covering Climate Now, but also of establishing the trust between rich and poor countries, trust that Guterres believes is necessary in order for the COP 26 climate summit this November to succeed. G7 leaders must guarantee that they will provide the climate aid they promised, Guterres said, and "clarify how that $100 billion will be delivered."
Supplying climate aid is an act not of charity but rather of self-preservation, according to a landmark International Energy Agency report released last month. In order to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5 C, the IEA said, the world must halt all new fossil fuel development, and both developing and developed countries alike must shift rapidly to non-carbon energy. That shift will be "impossible" for developing countries, Guterres said, without sizable financial and technological help.
The climate crisis and the Covid pandemic share something big in common. "You can't protect yourself unless you protect everybody else," said Rachel Kyte, the World Bank Group's special representative to the Paris climate summit and now the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. To that end, G7 leaders need to make it clear at this weekend's summit that they "will share [their] vaccine surplus and share it now. Otherwise, we're going to have variants coming back and coming back, and we'll never escape." Likewise, rich countries must help "get the entire world off coal" if they themselves want to survive climate change, Kyte added. "It's one boat. You don't survive in your end of the boat if the other end of the boat is going underwater."
But rebuilding trust with developing nations is problematic given G7 countries' poor record on climate aid, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, who was instrumental in helping diplomats from the global South insert the 1.5 C target in the Paris Agreement. "It's the same seven countries that made that promise [of climate aid in the Paris Agreement], which they reneged on. So, if they're going to have any credibility or trust, they're going to have to deliver [the money] they were supposed to for 2020, and then there's another $100 billion due in 2021. The issue is the credibility of the [G7] leaders, and whether we can believe anything they say at all."
To hear rich countries tell it, they actually have done a pretty good job of fulfilling their climate aid obligations. Citing 2018 data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of 38 of the world's highest-income economies, rich countries gave roughly $79 billion in climate aid in 2018.
But Oxfam's analysis of the OECD data reveals that this $79 billion figure is wildly inflated and based on dodgy definitions and accounting tricks. Some 75 percent of the $79 billion were given as loans that must be repaid rather than outright grants, said Tracy Carty, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam who co-authored the Oxfam analysis. And some aid was for projects that only a very forgiving mind would consider climate-friendly. For example, Japan claimed that its investment in a new coal plant in Bangladesh, a country with some of the world's most vulnerable ecosystems, qualified as climate aid because the new plant was more efficient than older models.
What's more, only 20 to 25 percent of rich countries' aid helps poor countries protect themselves from the heat waves, droughts, storms, rising seas, and other impacts of rising temperatures. Instead, most aid has been aimed at reducing emissions in the biggest developing economies, such as China, India, South Africa, and Brazil, Huq said, "while only 20 percent has gone to the most vulnerable countries, like my country, Bangladesh, to adapt to the impacts of climate change." One reason is that investments "in renewable energy projects generate revenue that allows loans to be repaid"; giving poor people money to survive storms and floods does not. Highly vulnerable developing countries demand, Huq added, that half of all climate aid "should be for adaptation in the most vulnerable countries," and that such aid must come as grants, not loans.
If G7 leaders do not issue a credible guarantee this weekend that they will honor their climate aid and other Paris Agreement obligations, then the world is headed for failure at the make-or-break climate summit in November, Huq and Kyte said. "The nearest thing we have to global government are these seven big economies, and if they decide to do something, then that something gets done," Huq said. "So far, both with climate aid and Covid vaccinations, [the G7 leaders] see themselves as the leaders of their own countries and don't care about the rest of the world. And they think they're going to be safe. But they're not going to be safe."
Leaders of the seven richest countries per capita are meeting at the Group of 7's annual summit this weekend--and climate justice is explicitly on the agenda. That has never happened. How the G7 leaders respond to the climate justice challenge this weekend will shape the chances of success at November's global climate summit that United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres calls "our last opportunity" to defuse the climate emergency.
At issue are the promises that rich countries made in the 2015 Paris Agreement, promises that they have flagrantly violated.
"Twenty twenty-one is a make-it-or-break-it year," Guterres said in an interview this week with the global news consortium Covering Climate Now. "I think we are still on time, but when you are on the verge of the abyss, you need to make sure that the next step is in the right direction."
At issue are the promises that rich countries made in the 2015 Paris Agreement, promises that they have flagrantly violated. Most media attention has focused on G7 countries' pledges to cut emissions enough to limit global temperature rise to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius and preferably to 1.5 C. Current policies and emissions trajectories instead put the earth on track for a 2.9 C increase by 2100, a de facto death sentence for millions of people and countless ecosystems, moving humanity further down the path to extinction. That disquieting prospect continues to spur grassroots protests against oil, coal, and gas development, including the Keystone XL pipeline in Canada whose owners officially canceled the project this week.
Equally important, though much less discussed, is rich countries' Paris Agreement pledge to provide $100 billion a year to help developing countries quit fossil fuels and protect against climate impacts. This obligation, which was to take effect in 2020, was grounded in the truism that climate change is overwhelmingly caused by the rich but disproportionately punishes the poor. Rich countries have not honored their $100 billion pledge either. Instead of $100 billion a year of climate aid, they have provided about $20 billion, according to an analysis that the global anti-poverty NGO Oxfam conducted of 2018 figures (the last year of authoritative data).
Boris Johnson, Britain's prime minister and host of this year's G7 summit, and Guterres have said they will press the other G7 leaders--US President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga--to make good on their Paris Agreement obligations. Doing so is a matter not only of justice, Guterres told Covering Climate Now, but also of establishing the trust between rich and poor countries, trust that Guterres believes is necessary in order for the COP 26 climate summit this November to succeed. G7 leaders must guarantee that they will provide the climate aid they promised, Guterres said, and "clarify how that $100 billion will be delivered."
Supplying climate aid is an act not of charity but rather of self-preservation, according to a landmark International Energy Agency report released last month. In order to hold the global temperature rise to 1.5 C, the IEA said, the world must halt all new fossil fuel development, and both developing and developed countries alike must shift rapidly to non-carbon energy. That shift will be "impossible" for developing countries, Guterres said, without sizable financial and technological help.
The climate crisis and the Covid pandemic share something big in common. "You can't protect yourself unless you protect everybody else," said Rachel Kyte, the World Bank Group's special representative to the Paris climate summit and now the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. To that end, G7 leaders need to make it clear at this weekend's summit that they "will share [their] vaccine surplus and share it now. Otherwise, we're going to have variants coming back and coming back, and we'll never escape." Likewise, rich countries must help "get the entire world off coal" if they themselves want to survive climate change, Kyte added. "It's one boat. You don't survive in your end of the boat if the other end of the boat is going underwater."
But rebuilding trust with developing nations is problematic given G7 countries' poor record on climate aid, said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, who was instrumental in helping diplomats from the global South insert the 1.5 C target in the Paris Agreement. "It's the same seven countries that made that promise [of climate aid in the Paris Agreement], which they reneged on. So, if they're going to have any credibility or trust, they're going to have to deliver [the money] they were supposed to for 2020, and then there's another $100 billion due in 2021. The issue is the credibility of the [G7] leaders, and whether we can believe anything they say at all."
To hear rich countries tell it, they actually have done a pretty good job of fulfilling their climate aid obligations. Citing 2018 data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of 38 of the world's highest-income economies, rich countries gave roughly $79 billion in climate aid in 2018.
But Oxfam's analysis of the OECD data reveals that this $79 billion figure is wildly inflated and based on dodgy definitions and accounting tricks. Some 75 percent of the $79 billion were given as loans that must be repaid rather than outright grants, said Tracy Carty, a senior policy adviser at Oxfam who co-authored the Oxfam analysis. And some aid was for projects that only a very forgiving mind would consider climate-friendly. For example, Japan claimed that its investment in a new coal plant in Bangladesh, a country with some of the world's most vulnerable ecosystems, qualified as climate aid because the new plant was more efficient than older models.
What's more, only 20 to 25 percent of rich countries' aid helps poor countries protect themselves from the heat waves, droughts, storms, rising seas, and other impacts of rising temperatures. Instead, most aid has been aimed at reducing emissions in the biggest developing economies, such as China, India, South Africa, and Brazil, Huq said, "while only 20 percent has gone to the most vulnerable countries, like my country, Bangladesh, to adapt to the impacts of climate change." One reason is that investments "in renewable energy projects generate revenue that allows loans to be repaid"; giving poor people money to survive storms and floods does not. Highly vulnerable developing countries demand, Huq added, that half of all climate aid "should be for adaptation in the most vulnerable countries," and that such aid must come as grants, not loans.
If G7 leaders do not issue a credible guarantee this weekend that they will honor their climate aid and other Paris Agreement obligations, then the world is headed for failure at the make-or-break climate summit in November, Huq and Kyte said. "The nearest thing we have to global government are these seven big economies, and if they decide to do something, then that something gets done," Huq said. "So far, both with climate aid and Covid vaccinations, [the G7 leaders] see themselves as the leaders of their own countries and don't care about the rest of the world. And they think they're going to be safe. But they're not going to be safe."
"They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law," the Minnesota progressive said of the Trump administration.
Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Delia Ramirez on Thursday strongly condemned the Trump administration's deadly attack on a boat allegedly trafficking cocaine off the coast of Venezuela as "lawless and reckless," while urging the White House to respect lawmakers' "clear constitutional authority on matters of war and peace."
"Congress has not declared war on Venezuela, or Tren de Aragua, and the mere designation of a group as a terrorist organization does not give any president carte blanche," said Omar (D-Minn.), referring to President Donald Trump's day one executive order designating drug cartels including the Venezuela-based group as foreign terrorist organizations.
Trump—who reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force to combat cartels abroad—said that Tuesday's US strike in international waters killed 11 people. The attack sparked fears of renewed US aggression in a region that has endured well over 100 US interventions over the past 200 years, and against a country that has suffered US meddling since the late 19th century.
"It appears that US forces that were recently sent to the region in an escalatory and provocative manner were under no threat from the boat they attacked," Omar cotended. "There is no conceivable legal justification for this use of force. Unless compelling evidence emerges that they were acting in self-defense, that makes the strike a clear violation of international law."
Omar continued:
They're now using the failed War on Drugs to justify their egregious violation of international law. The US posture towards the eradication of drugs has caused immeasurable damage across our hemisphere. It has led to massive forced displacement, environmental devastation, violence, and human rights violations. What it has not done is any damage whatsoever to narcotrafficking or to the cartels. It has been a dramatic, profound failure at every level. In Latin America, even right-wing presidents acknowledge this is true.
The congresswoman's remarks came on the same day that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated a pair of Ecuadorean drug gangs as terrorist organizations while visiting the South American nation. This, after Rubio said that US attacks on suspected drug traffickers "will happen again."
"Trump and Rubio's apparent solution" to the failed drug war, said Omar, is "to make it even more militarized," an effort that "is doomed to fail."
"Worse, it risks spiraling into the exact type of endless, pointless conflict that Trump supposedly opposes," she added.
Echoing critics including former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, who called Tuesday's strike a "summary execution," Ramirez (D-Ill.) said Thursday on social media that "Trump and the Pentagon executed 11 people in the Caribbean, 1,500 miles away from the United States, without a legal rationale."
"From Iran to Venezuela, to DC, LA, and Chicago, Trump continues to abuse our military power, undermine the rule of law, and erode our constitutional boundaries in political spectacles," Ramirez added, referring to the president's ordering of strikes on Iran and National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, the nation's capital, and likely beyond.
"Presidents don't bomb first and ask questions later," Ramirez added. "Wannabe dictators do that."
"The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening!" said Florida Immigrant Coalition's deputy director.
Two judges appointed to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit by President Donald Trump issued a Thursday decision that allows a newly established but already notorious immigrant detention center in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, to stay open.
Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida sought "to halt the unlawful construction" of the site. Last month, Judge Kathleen Williams—appointed by former President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida—ordered the closure of the facility within 60 days.
However, on Thursday, Circuit Judges Elizabeth Branch and Barbara Lagoa blocked Williams' decision, concluding that "the balance of the harms and our consideration of the public interest favor a stay of the preliminary injunction."
Judge Adalberto Jordan, an Obama appointee, issued a brief but scathing dissent. He wrote that the majority "essentially ignores the burden borne by the defendants, pays only lip service to the abuse of discretion standard, engages in its own factfinding, declines to consider the district court's determination on irreparable harm, and performs its own balancing of the equities."
The 11th Circuit's ruling was cheered by the US Department of Homeland Security, Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who declared in a video that "Alligator Alcatraz is, in fact, like we've always said, open for business."
Uthmeier's communications director, Jeremy Redfern, collected responses to the initial ruling by state and federal Democrats, and urged them to weigh in on social media. Florida state Sen. Shevrin "Shev" Jones (D-34) did, stressing that "cruelty is still cruelty."
In a Thursday statement, Florida Immigrant Coalition deputy director Renata Bozzetto said that "the 11th Circuit is allowing atrocities to happen by reversing the injunction that helped to paralyze something that has been functioning as an extrajudicial site in our own state! The Everglades Detention Camp isn't just an environmental threat; it is also a huge human rights crisis."
"Housing thousands of men in tents in the middle of a fragile ecosystem puts immense strain on Florida's source environment, but even more troublesome, it disregards human rights and our constitutional commitments," Bozzetto continued. "This is a place where hundreds of our neighbors were illegally held, were made invisible within government systems, and were subjected to inhumane heat and unbearable treatment. The fact that a facility embedded in so much pain is allowed to reopen is absolutely disheartening! The only just solution is to shut this facility down and ensure that no facility like this opens in our state!"
"Lastly, it is imperative that we as a nation uphold the balance of powers that this country was founded on," she added. "That is what makes this country special! Calling judges who rule against you 'activists' flies in the face of our democracy. It is a huge tell that AG Uthmeier expressed this as a 'win for President Trump's agenda,' as if the courts were to serve as political weapons. This demonstrates the clear partisan games they are playing with people's lives and with our democracy."
While Alligator Alcatraz has drawn widespread criticism for the conditions in which detainees are held, the suit is based on the government's failure to follow a law that requires an environmental review, given the facility's proximity to surrounding wetlands.
In response to the ruling, Elise Bennett, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Associated Press that "this is a heartbreaking blow to America's Everglades and every living creature there, but the case isn't even close to over."
The report found that seven of America's biggest healthcare companies have collectively dodged $34 billion in taxes as a result of Trump's 2017 tax law while making patient care worse.
President Donald Trump's tax policies have allowed the healthcare industry to rake in "sick profits" by avoiding tens of billions of dollars in taxes and lowering the quality of care for patients, according to a report out Wednesday.
The report, by the advocacy groups Americans for Tax Fairness and Community Catalyst, found that "seven of America's biggest healthcare corporations have dodged over $34 billion in collective taxes since the enactment of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that Republicans recently succeeded in extending."
The study examined four health insurance companies—Centene, Cigna, Elevance (formerly Anthem), and Humana; two for-profit hospital chains—HCA Holdings and Universal Health Services; and the CVS Healthcare pharmacy conglomerate.
It found that these companies' average profits increased by 75%, from around $21 billion before the tax bill to about $35 billion afterward, and yet their federal tax rate was about the same.
This was primarily due to the 2017 law's slashing of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, a change that was cheered on by the healthcare industry and continued with this year's GOP tax legislation. The legislation also loosened many tax loopholes and made it easier to move profits to offshore tax shelters.
The report found that Cigna, for instance, saved an estimated $181 million in taxes on the $2.5 billion it held in offshore accounts before the law took effect.
The law's supporters, including those in the healthcare industry, argued that lowering corporate taxes would allow companies to increase wages and provide better services to patients. But the report found that "healthcare corporations failed to use their tax savings to lower costs for customers or meaningfully boost worker pay."
Instead, they used those windfalls primarily to increase shareholder payouts through stock buybacks and dividends and to give fat bonuses to their top executives.
Stock buybacks increased by 42% after the law passed, with Centene purchasing an astonishing average of 20 times more of its own shares in the years following its enactment than in the years before. During the first seven years of the law, dividends for shareholders increased by 133% to an average of $5.6 billion.
Pay for the seven companies' half-dozen top executives increased by a combined $100 million, 42%, on average. This is compared to the $14,000 pay increase that the average employee at these companies received over the same period, which is a much more modest increase of 24%.
And contrary to claims that lower taxes would allow companies to improve coverage or patient care, the opposite has occurred.
While data is scarce, the rate of denied insurance claims is believed to have risen since the law went into effect.
The four major insurers' Medicare Advantage plans were found to frequently deny claims improperly. In the case of Centene, 93% of its denials for prior authorizations were overturned once patients appealed them, which indicates that they may have been improper. The others were not much better: 86% of Cigna's denials were overturned, along with 71% for Elevance/Anthem, and 65% for Humana.
The report said that such high rates of denials being overturned raise "questions about whether Medicare Advantage plans are complying with their coverage obligations or just reflexively saying 'no' in the hopes there will be no appeal."
Salespeople for the Cigna-owned company EviCore, which insurers hire to review claims, have even boasted that they help companies reduce their costs by increasing denials by 15%, part of a model that ProPublica has called the "denials for dollars business." Their investigation in 2024 found that insurers have used EviCore to evaluate whether to pay for coverage for over 100 million people.
And while paying tens of millions to their executives, both HCA and Universal Health Services—which each saved around $5.5 billion from Trump's tax law—have been repeatedly accused of overbilling patients while treating them in horrendous conditions.
"Congress should demand both more in tax revenue and better patient care from these highly profitable corporations," Americans for Tax Fairness said in a statement. "Healthcare corporation profitability should not come before quality of patient care. In healthcare, more than almost any other industry, the search for ever higher earnings threatens the wellbeing and lives of the American people."