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Janet Adamy in the Wall Street Journal reports (subscription necessary) that health insurers across the country are using the health reform law as an excuse to justify their latest round of rate hikes for individual insurance policies...

Corporations are shoving all of the increased cost of worker healthcare, and more, onto their employees, says a new study. And that's on top of news that companies are sitting on loads of cash while refusing to hire laid-off workers. Please pass the salt to rub in our wounds.

Insurers, Employers Threaten to Drop Low-Benefit Employee Insurance If $750,000 Annual Benefit Limit Is Enforced
 
Washington, DC — Americans were promised meaningful health benefits under health reform and deserve better than the near-worthless junk insurance that low-wage employers are lobbying to preserve, said Consumer Watchdog. The group urged President Obama to resist making wholesale exemptions to the new law.

Jones/Feuer Effort Defeated; Schwarzenegger/Leno Bill Clears Legislature Allowing Insurers to Charge "Unreasonable" and "Unjustified" Premiums
 
Santa Monica, CA – Sacramento lawmakers, buffeted by hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance company contributions, defeated a strong insurance rate reform bill supported by consumer and labor organization (AB 2578- Jones/Feuer) late Tuesday night. Democratic opponents of the Jones/Feuer legislation supported an alternative bill, proposed by Governor Schwarzenegger and carried by Senator Mark Leno (SB 1163), that allows insurers to charge excessive health insurance premiums under a new, industry-preferred standard that merely requires rates to be "actuarially sound."  

Santa Monica, CA -- Some of the top Democratic recipients of health insurance cash teamed up with Republicans in the California state senate late Monday to block health insurance premium legislation authored by state Assembly Members Dave Jones and Mike Feuer. Overall health insurers have given $800,218 in campaign contributions to California senators since 2007, in addition to gifts and donations made at their behest to nonprofit groups according to an analysis by Consumer Watchdog.

When Anthem Blue Cross announced its controversial premium increases in California recently, the insurer claimed, "a carrier must be able to receive actuarially sound rates." So it is remarkable that "progressive" San Francisco State Senator Mark Leno, a single payer health care advocate, recently introduced eleventh hour legislation codifying Anthem Blue Cross's "actuarially sound" defense of premium increases in law.

Physicians Must Disclose If They Own CT, MRI or PET Scanners

Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a national consumer advocacy group based in Santa Monica, Calif., said the new disclosure requirement may eventually lead patients to think hard about the financial relationship their doctor has. But in the short term, he said, the law will have little impact. "People will still defer to the white coat."

Wouldn't it be great if we could all deduct our federal income and investment taxes from next year's income? And if we could also deduct that stress-reducing trip to a spa in Bora Bora? And if the government would just take our word for it? Fantasy for us, but the health insurance industry think that's what federal health reform ought to allow, on a corporate scale.

The $1-million grants, which went to all but five states, will help many expand public access to information about rate hikes and hire experts to review proposed charges.

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration specifically ruled out seeking prior approval authority. Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica-based advocacy group, urged the administration to reject California's grant application, saying the grant would "prevent, not develop, any effective state regulation of health insurance rates." California nonetheless received its grant, which is to be used to streamline collection of data on proposed rate hikes.

It took my wife an hour and half to make the two mile commute home Monday, after the secret service closed some of LA's busiest streets at rush hour to shuttle the president from his Beverly Hills hotel to a fundraiser for Congress...

Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that HHS awarded $46 million in rate review grant funds to 45 states. But how much new protection will consumers gain from double-digit premium increases?

Insurance Commissioners and Obama Administration Must Resist More Weakening of Curbs on Industry Overhead and Profit, Says Consumer Watchdog

Seattle, WA --The nation’s state insurance commissioners are making far-reaching decisions in Seattle this week on whether health insurance companies will spend more on health care, less on their own overhead and investor profit. The decisions will affect whether insurance companies continue with double-digit premium increases and declines in the amount of actual health care they provide, or seek a more efficient business model that is as fair to consumers as it is to Wall Street, said Consumer Watchdog.

As part of ObamaCare, the federal government will impose strict new spending rules on health insurers. How it does so could have a sweeping impact on the industry and patient care. "We believe that insurance companies will get enough goodies out of the new "medical loss ratio" (MLR) law that they will not have to do business any differently," said Consumer Watchdog's Judy Dugan. "If a nursing line is something where a nurse can advise a patient on treatment, sure, that may be a medical expense. But if it is just to determine if a patient needs to see a doctor, that's just cost containment."

It's livelier Saturday at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners meeting in Seattle. Most refreshing was a medium-sized street demonstration, with forays into meeting rooms, by young and old demonstrators protesting lobbyist influence on health care reform. They handed out "lobbyist disinfectant packs," including soap and face masks, and demanded that regulators do their job for consumers. The sponsor was the "Puget Sound Alliance for Retired Americans," and it was backed by Health Care for America Now, a national group that is finally engaging with vigor on regulation issues.

(Seattle)--The big buzz today at a meeting of the National Association of Insurance Regulators was that President Obama would speak to the thousand-plus people gathered here--and then that he wouldn't. Maybe he didn't want to get...

Insurers and employers say a generous waiver process is needed to avoid a sudden jump in premiums. But patient advocates, such as California-based Consumer Watchdog, warn against being too lenient. All sides are pressing their cases with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is writing the rules on the waiver process but has not specified what they will say or when they'll be in place. It's not clear yet whether waivers could continue after 2014. HHS said details on the process are under development, and declined to elaborate.

Washington, DC – Consumer Watchdog called on the Obama Administration to adopt new regulations requiring broad financial disclosures by health insurance companies to help insulate Americans from double-digit rate increases. Insurers should provide details of shadowy multibillion-dollar transfers to out-of-state affiliates and parent companies when they are required to justify “unreasonable” rate increases under the health reform law, said the group.

Consumer advocates urged the Obama administration Thursday to investigate what they called an effort by large for-profit insurance companies to slash spending on medical care even as they raise premiums. In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Media and Democracy said that insurers reported less medical spending in recent months ahead of new federal rules that will require the companies to do just the opposite starting next year.

Chairmen of the Senate and House committees with jurisdiction over health care reform sent a letter to Secretary Sebelius on Tuesday clarifying their intent on a particularly controversial provision in the...

Consumer Watchdog and the Center for Media and Democracy have sent a letter to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius calling on her and the administration to investigate the recent dramatic decreases in medical loss ratios by major health care insurers in anticipation of health care reform implementation.