Healthcare
Consumer Watchdog fights to protect patients, improve health care quality and create universal care. We believe the health of patients should come before the financial wealth of health insurance companies, drug companies and other profit-driven health care corporations. We work toward a safer, affordable health care system by eliminating waste, fraud and profiteering.
In the mid to late 1990s, Consumer Watchdog pioneered the nation’s toughest HMO patients’ rights law. During the 2000s, we uncovered outrageous practices by health insurance companies that resulted in some of the strongest protections under Obamacare. These include the bans on preexisting condition limitations, medical underwriting and the ability of insurance companies to revoke policies for innocent omissions on enrollment forms.
Our current fights include campaigns to reduce the price of prescription drugs, implement a Medicare for all system and lower health insurance rates through proven regulation that has saved drivers and home owners hundreds of billions of dollars on their insurance rates in California.
Racial Justice Groups Endorse Fairness Act to Reform Medical Negligence Law, Call on Governor Newsom and Legislature to Act
Manteca, CA -- A coalition of Central Valley racial justice groups announced their endorsement of the Fairness for Injured Patients Act, the 2022 ballot initiative to update California’s discriminatory cap on compensation for patients harmed by medical negligence.
History of Positions Undermining Patient Safety Disqualify Former Leaders of Doctors’ Lobby For Seats on CA Medical Board, Patients Harmed by Medical Negligence to Testify
Sacramento, CA – Two former leaders of the California Medical Association should be rejected as nominees to the Medical Board of California for their records opposing common sense patient safety reforms, Consumer Watchdog will testify at their confirmation hearing today.
The Senate Rules Committee hearing begins at 1:30PM and can be viewed on Senate TV at: https://www.senate.ca.gov/
'No One Has Ever Seen This’: Coronavirus Rattles California Ballot Campaigns
By Jeremy B. White, POLITICO
March 18, 2020
https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/03/18/no-one-has-…
SAN FRANCISCO — As Californians raided hand sanitizer and wipes to battle the spread of the coronavirus last week, Fred Kimball pivoted to make a different kind of bulk purchase: 300,000 pens.
Substance abuse treatment centers should serve patients, not profit
Last week SB 325, a bill by Senator Jerry Hill to require the state of California to license and oversee outpatient substance abuse treatment centers, faced its first test in the legislature. It passed the Senate Health Committee unanimously.
California Acts to Stem Opioid Overprescribing and Prevent Overdose Deaths
Sacramento, CA – Starting today, California doctors will have to check a patient’s prescription history before prescribing addictive opioids and other controlled substances.
Insurance Goliath Sues Lawyers Representing HIV Patients For Aetna’s Own Privacy Breach
Los Angeles, CA -- This morning, health insurance Goliath Aetna sued the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog and Whatley Kallas LLP, a consumer law firm, who’ve sued Aetna for its improper and negligent disclosure of the HIV positive status of thousands of its members. The disclosure was made as a result of Aetna’s use of a window pane envelope that was sent to communicate a member-wide business practice change Aetna agreed to make in order to resolve an earlier lawsuit brought by the consumer advocates.
Trump’s Health Plan Order Could Bring Back Days of Junk Insurance
Santa Monica, CA -- The White House’s executive order today seeking to allow for more “Association Health Plans” could turn the clock back to days when patients faced unlimited medical bills even when they played by the rules, the nonprofit nonpartisan group Consumer Watchdog said today.
Consumer Watchdog fought off previous proposals that allowed for the sale of more such policies that promise lower costs but deliver junk health insurance plans that can leave patients with hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills.
California Supreme Court Affirms Medical Board’s Use Of State Prescription Drug Database to Discipline Dangerous Doctors and Prevent Opioid Abuse
Santa Monica, CA – The California Supreme Court today issued a decision affirming the right of the Medical Board of California to use the state prescription drug database to protect patients from incompetent and negligent doctors, and to prevent dangerous and illegal prescribing of opioids and other powerful medications.
Allow States to Adopt Single Payer Health Care, Not Just Weak "Co-Ops"
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Washington D.C. -- Any national health reform compromise that allows
states to adopt ineffective health care "co-ops" should also allow
states to adopt highly effective single-payer systems, according to
Consumer Watchdog. According to Politico.com, the new version of the House health care
reform legislation developed by the Energy and Commerce Committee will
include a provisions allowing state to create co-ops for residents to
buy private insurance.
