Consumer Watchdog executive director Carmen Balber has been with the organization for overtwo decades. She spent four years directing the group’s Washington, D.C. office where she advocated for key health insurance market reforms that were ultimately enacted into law as part of the Affordable Care Act.
Balber is recognized as a leading expert on a wide range of personal insurance issues and has authored or co-authored numerous reports on the auto, health and medical malpractice insurance industries, and insurance rate regulation. Her recent advocacy focuses on the impacts of climate change and insurance industry accountability for rising prices and reduced access to insurance for homeowners and renters.
She also leads Consumer Watchdog’s advocacy to improve patient safety in California, including campaigns to win new access to justice for victims of medical negligence by updating the state’s cap on medical malpractice damages; winning a voice for injured consumers at the Medical Board of California; and legislation requiring doctors to check a patient’s prescription history before prescribing opioids and other drugs. In 2012, she managed the coalition effort to defeat Prop 33, a $17 million insurance industry initiative that would have raised rates on good drivers. She has appeared as a commentator on these topics on broadcasts and in publications across the country.
As an organizer with Consumer Watchdog, Balber ran campaigns to pass volunteer-qualified ballot measures enacting the nation’s strongest municipal conflict of interest protections in five cities across California. She also coordinated citizen organizing efforts in Consumer Watchdog’s successful volunteer lobbying effort to block a legislative utility bailout in Sacramento in 2001.
Before joining Consumer Watchdog, Balber learned the ropes at the Colorado and Washington PIRGs. She holds a B.A. in Politics from Pomona College in Claremont, California and is a graduate of UWC-USA in Montezuma, New Mexico, one of 17 secondary schools across the globe dedicated to making education a force for peace, sustainability and change by bringing together youth from a diversity of countries and cultures to live and learn. She is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Anishinaabe).
Consumer Watchdog Campaign: Final Yes on 46 TV Ad, “Need A Drink?†Dramatizes Risks To Patient Safety When Doctors Are Not Drug & Alcohol...
Santa Monica, CA – Consumer advocates and victims of medical negligence released a new Yes on 46 TV ad today featuring a sweating, shaky surgeon who runs out of the operating room and dramatizes the potentially deadly risks of physician substance abuse.
Yes on 45: Price-gouged Policyholders & Consumer Advocates Decry Menacing Anti-Prop 45 Mailers Showing Gov’t “Playing Doctor” with Hospital Gowns
Santa Monica, CA – Consumer Watchdog, Consumer Federation of California, the California Nurses Association and price-gouged policyholders condemned menacing health insurance company mailers against Proposition 45 today as a new Hoover Institution Poll puts Proposition 45 ahead by 12 points, 42% to 30% just seven days before the Election.
Yes on 45: Policyholders, Prop 45 Advocates And Nurses Deliver Manure To Blue Shield To Return Some of the B.S. In Insurance Industry’s Ad...
San Diego, CA – Health insurance policyholders joined with bedside nurses from the California Nurses Association and consumer advocates supporting Proposition 45, which prohibits excessive rate increases, to deliver a pickup truck containing a ton of steer manure to Blue Shield’s San Diego offices.
Consumer Watchdog Campaign: Senator Boxer Joins Victims of Medical Negligence and Families Who Lost Children To Negligence To Call For Voters’ Support For Prop...
Los Angeles, CA – Today U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer stood with victims of medical negligence and families who lost their children to preventable medical error and called on California voters to support the patient safety protections in Proposition 46.
Consumer Watchdog Campaign: Victim Of Negligence At Hands Of A Drunk Doctor, A Physician and Consumer Advocates Release New Yes on 46 TV Ad,...
Santa Monica, CA – A victim of medical negligence at the hands of an Orange County doctor with a history of alcohol abuse, a physician and consumer advocates unveiled a new television ad for Yes on Prop 46 today, highlighting how Prop 46 will identify and deter physician substance abuse with random drug and alcohol testing.
Yes on 45: Fresno Bee Endorses Yes On Prop 45, Says: Ballot Initiative Will Rein In Health Insurance Premiums
SANTA MONICA, CA – The Fresno Bee has endorsed Proposition 45 saying it will rein in health insurance rates and noting “powerful forces are opposed” to the ballot initiative.
Yes on 45: Consumers Launch New Yes on 45 Street Art Campaign – Asks San Franciscans: “Health Insurance Rates Killing You?â€
San Francisco, CA – Consumer advocates and nurses launched a new “Yes on 45” street art campaign hitting San Francisco and Sacramento this week that exposes the health insurance companies spending $37.5 million to oppose Proposition 45. Thousands of posters will be plastered through wild-posting in the coming days in other cities across the state.
Consumer Watchdog Campaign: Proponent of Prop 46 Calls on California Medical Association to Pull Ad the Sacramento Bee Called an “Outright Lieâ€
DANVILLE, CA – Bob Pack, proponent of Proposition 46 who lost his two children to medical negligence, called on the California Medical Association to pull their latest ad – called an “outright lie” yesterday by the Sacramento Bee – from the airwaves.