Consumer Watchdog – Protecting Patients - Blog

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top GOP politician in the health care reform debate, is positive that Americans don't need an option to private, for-profit health insurers. He sees his anything like offering Medicare as a voluntary option to consumers as a deal-killer, according to CQ.com (subscription barrier). A guy with Grassley's mind-set must also see private contractors as the saviors of Iraq and AIG as the model for a healthy, deregulated financial system.

A newspaper reporter just called to ask about the state of privacy under electronic medical records, which will now be spreading thanks to $20 billion in the federal economic stimulus plan.  Electronic medical records can help avoid medical mistakes, like those suffered by Dennis Quaid's newborn twins, but the privacy protections under the stimulus bill need to improve.

As HMO execs gathered at the Ritz Carlton in Georgetown, their hired hands on Capitol Hill grilled the Adminisration in hearings today about cutting payments to ineffective HMOs under Medicare and about the public option in the president's health plan.  The White House showed a sign of compromise too early.

I joined patients and nurses at a protest this morning outside the Ritz-Carlton, while health insurance executives gathered inside and plotted how to make sure private health insurance companies can keep gouging patients in any health care reform...

I remember flying around Montana on a national HMO patients' rights tour when Democratic US Senator Max Baucus was positioning himself as the real HMO reformer compared to longtime Republican US Senator from Montana Conrad Burns. Now Baucus, as the Chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, is positioned to dictate the terms of health care reform on Capitol Hill. But our new study of campaign contributions on Capitol Hill calls into question what he will deliver as the Senate architect of Obamacare.

The debate over health care reform too often comes down to a shorthand of insuring the uninsured. But having an insurance policy isn't the same as being able to get health care. Karen Tumulty, a health reporter for Time, tells us what happened to her brother when kidney failure struck -- a maze of debt and rejection that threatened his life, even though he thought he'd had insurance for six years. The story is full of reasons why private insurance companies can't be allowed to dictate national health policy.

Thursday's White House summit on health care reform was much more show than substance. What is showed was that president has delivered on at least one campaign promise: making sure health care policy is not created in windowless rooms. On the other hand, not a single consumer advocate was part of the group of 120 who gathered for the summit.

When Dennis Quaid went to Congress last year to testify about a threatening Supreme Court decision, it was hard to imagine the Supremes might actually listen to why consumers should able to sue drug companies over dangerous drugs when the FDA approved the label. Today's 6-3 ruling shows The Court heard Quaid, Congress and the people