Consumer Watchdog – Protecting Patients - Blog

Those of us who have health insurance--or think we have health insurance--can get complacent about whether the nation needs that big, complicated health reform legislation. But just try getting sick. Is your insurance even real? If it is, can you afford it after the latest round of price hikes? Is your deductible so big that paying it will mean financial ruin? Check out these stories and think about what the White House and Congress, by wimping out again on health reform, will condemn all of us to...

Here's the full link to last night's excellent Dateline NBC "Critical Condition," which followed insured patients as they were turned down by their health insurers for critical care.

The Washington Post today has an eye-opening story today on how a family ended up in crushing debt at an "in-network" hospital apparently jammed with out-of-network doctors. Tens of thousands of dollars later, their little boy's rare and deadly heart defect is at least semi-fixed, but the family finances are in ruins. It's a problem that won't be fixed by reforms that rely on the private insurance industry. But it's also a problem that Congress can partly cure, with or without bigger reforms.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said little about health care, though the one fragment that is quoted leaves no doubt about where he stood: “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and the most inhumane.” The quote is hard to confirm, but health care proponents losing ground to a fear campaign need King's power to stoke determination in the service of hope.

California has been a leader in patients rights, largely in response to abuses  by HMOs that, for instance, tried to eject new mothers and babies from the hospital a few hours after giving birth, and attempted to require "drive-by mastectomies."  The federal health reform bill could weaken or do away with all that, including a right to HIV/AIDS testing. Rep. Jackie Speier of San Mateo is leading a tough fight to preserve such rights, and so is Consumer Watchdog.

If our semi-reformed health care system is going to stay in the hands of private, largely for-profit insurance companies, we're all going to need the help of insiders--the people who know the inner workings of the health insurance industry. For instance, former corporate insurance adviser Richard Eskow has a Huffington Post piece today that's an eye-opener on the "give them less and make them think it's more" tactics used by both employers and health insurers.

Those of us who spend a lot of time watching insurance companies are worried about a seemingly innocuous provision in the Senate health reform bill: Insurance companies and employers could provide up to a 50% "wellness incentive" in the major health reform bill. My thought: Who is it that insurance companies want to discourage from buying their policies?

Health insurers, hospitals and even some state-level doctor groups are gearing up for the next battle against reform, in state capitols. So, just as insurance companies used your ever-rising premium dollars to...

I've been reading the latest amendments to the Senate health bill, hunti...

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman called in his New York Times column today for revising the rules on the filibuster. His voice lends lots of credence to the movement.