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Carmen Balber, director of the Washington office for Consumer Watchdog, an insurance industry critic that has been keeping close tabs on the law's implementation, said that increased public scrutiny has served to pull back some insurance companies. But, she said, that isn't enough. "There's only so much that shaming the industry will do," she said. What really needs to happen, she said, is for state regulators to get the resources and political power to investigate and crack down on unjustified rate hikes. "That's why the state grant program is so important," she said.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has announced that it will spend $50 million against vulnerable Democrats who said "yes" to the health reform law. It's also assembling a pencil-toting army to weaken regulations based on the bill, and planning lawsuits. Why would the American Medical Assn., by staying on the Chamber's board of directors, financially and morally support this continued effort to kill health reform? You should call and ask. Click onward for the phone numbers.

 

President Lyndon Johnson faced hard choices in 1964: Preserve Democrats' majority in Congress, perhaps for decades. Or ram through landmark civil rights legislation proposed by the slain John F. Kennedy, plus Medicare health coverage for seniors--and lose the whole bloc of so-called Southern Democrats, Strom Thurmond among them.Substitute Blue Dog Democrats for Southern Democrats, and you'd be close to what Congress and President Obama face over a much easier choice--a moderate health reform bill that bears no relation to a "government takeover."

As pressure builds toward Thursday's "bipartisan" presidential summit on health care reform, some Capitol Hill staffers have reported receiving calls from the White House claiming the President is ready to give up the legal rights of medical malpractice victims for GOP support.

What's wrong with the trade-off? LA's local NPR talk radio host, Larry Mantle of KPCC's Air Talk, asked me yesterday in a midst of a debate about Obama's new health care reform proposal, which appropriately did not mention any changes to medical malpractice accountability. So I told Steven Olsen's story.

Yesterday happened to be the 20th birthday for Steven Olsen, whose tragic story at the age of two year deeply touched me and every one who ever heard it. Steven and his terrific parents, Kathy and Scott, will be at the White House next Monday to stop the President from using the remedies of innocent patients as a bargaining chip to get Republican votes. If President Obama personally spends a few minutes with Steven, it's hard to imagine how his conscience will let him sell out the rights of injured patients for Republican votes.

 

Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s departure from the national Chamber of Commerce is a message that other big members ought to hear. The Chamber, claiming to represent all of U.S. business, denies the existence of global warming and seeks to undercut the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency. I'm unsurprised that American Petroleum Association loves the Chamber, but what the heck is the American Medical Association, whose members are scientists, doing with the Chamber troglodytes? Here are the AMA's phone numbers, and a list of other member companies that sell stuff to us.

 

Consumer Watchdog calls the co-ops "pseudo-reform" that could do far more harm than good if they create loopholes that could gut state consumer protection laws. The consumer advocacy group notes that Sen. Mike Enzi, R-WY, came up with a similar plan in 2006, which would have exempted the co-opts from state consumer protection laws.

Here's a memorable statement against U.S. health care reform: "Behind it will come other Federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country. Until one day ... we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don't do this and if I don't do it [to kill this idea], one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free." Who said it?

When health insurance companies or their Congressional sock puppets tell you that competition in the private market will reform health care and cut costs, run for the hills. It's a flat-out lie, and their lobbyists' noses are getting...

I’m catching up on House health care hearings this morning (watching one live and one recorded keeps things interesting) and tuned in to two debates on limiting protections for victims of medical malpractice. Rather than focus on saving money and protecting patients by preventing medical errors from occurring in the first place...

The American Medical Association has proven again that the greed of the medical insurance complex is the chief obstacle to health care reform in America.

Health insurers and drugmakers have contributed millions of dollars to members of Congress. One of the top recipients of that money, said Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group based in Santa Monica, was Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, who was running the hearings when the arrests took place this month. He accepted $413,000 in drug and health insurance campaign contributions during that time.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Obama’s campaign to cut health costs by $2 trillion over the next decade, announced with fanfare two weeks ago, may have hit another snag: the nation’s antitrust laws. Among the groups that say they have joined together to rein in health costs, besides the hospital and medical associations, are America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. Jamie Court, the president of Consumer Watchdog, an advocacy group, said he was wary of such joint efforts. "When companies that control the health care system get together to change it, there is a serious risk that they are doing it to stifle competition at the expense of consumers,” Mr. Court said.

My brain is sprained from trying to figure out the big White House meeting today between medical/insurance industry execs and President Obama. One upside: The execs who went onstage with Obama, nodding about the need for reform, won't be able to walk away easily later. The broad cost-cutting ideas mentioned--more efficiency, less paperwork, better preventive and chronic care--are worthy. But the lack of detail or accountability--or really, of anything new--shows the distance to go and loopholes to be opened.

One doctor traded prescriptions for sex. A pharmacist illegally popped pain pills while filling prescriptions. And a dentist huffed nitrous oxide until he lost the feeling in his fingers. When it comes to labeling a doctor as dangerous, Virginia law leaves Department of Health Profession investigators and board members empty-handed. The board has not developed any guidelines on how to make that call. It’s left to the person in charge of either the investigation or the board hearing. Jerry Flanagan, of Consumer Watchdog, finds the law too gray. “You need an objective standard that is consistently applied, and that the public knows, so… you know what the line is,” he said.

If Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) is "inching toward a consensus" with healthcare industry groups on a framework for comprehensive health reform, one activist group with a liberal bent is none too happy about it. California-based Consumer Watchdog (formerly called the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights) faxed a letter Friday to Kennedy and the rest of the Senate protesting their "back door negotiations" with healthcare lobbyists.

President Barack Obama promised to offer consumers a "public option" to the private insurance market.  Giving every American the option of joining Medicare regardless of age is the best way to keep that promise.

To keep its doctors from being tainted by business biases, Stanford University's medical school announced Tuesday it is imposing a highly unusual restriction on educational contributions by drug and medical device companies.

Los Angeles, CA -- Doctors and pharmacists are having trouble cutting off drug abusers because of the state's clunky process for checking a patient's previous prescriptions, says Attorney General Jerry Brown, who wants to make the information...

Cautionary Tale for Future Mergers

She was persona-non-grata in the early 1990s, when the then-first lady's dramatic health-care reform package went down. These days Hillary Clinton is winning raves among health-care-industry groups -- and attracting their campaign dollars.

Newsweek

"There's nobody in this race with her knowledge to make health care available to every American at a cheaper cost, but it would take going after the insurance industry that's funding her candidacy," say Jamie Court, president of ConsumerWatchdog.org. "I don't know if there was a smoky back room, but her positions are certainly not threatening her cash stream, and their cash stream is helping her maintain her position as a front runner. In politics there aren't too many coincidences."