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).
Field Poll Says Half of California Voters Can’t Afford Health Care
Santa Monica, CA – The Field Poll released a survey today finding that 50% of California voters have difficulty affording health care, and 73% say insurance costs are the most difficult to afford. California voters will soon have the chance to make health insurance more affordable by requiring insurance companies to publicly justify and get approval for health insurance rates before they take effect.
Women Harmed By Medical Negligence Ask Planned Parenthood CEOs Not To Be Anti-Woman
Santa Monica, CA – Fifteen women and mothers whose lives have been devastated by medical negligence wrote to the CEOs of Planned Parenthood today asking them to reverse a position that is devastating to women’s health and access to justice in California.
Doctors’ Lobby Guts Patient Safety Reforms As New Evidence Reveals Rampant Narcotics Over-Prescribing by Physicians
Santa Monica, CA – Two major patient safety bills passed a key Assembly committee this morning only after being stripped of key protections after heavy lobbying by the California Medical Association.
Father Who Filed Ballot Measure To Redeem Children’s Death Challenges Doctor Who Heads Medical Association To Debate and Stop Demeaning His Children’s Memory
Danville, CA – Bob Pack today wrote Dr. Paul Phinney, head of the California Medical Association, with hard words over Phinney’s refusal to acknowledge his family’s suffering and that of other medical negligence victims in his public response to Pack’s ballot measure, “The Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act.”
Father Who Lost Young Children Files Ballot Initiative To Address Patient Safety Issues Behind Deaths; Drug Testing And Doctor Accountability Included
Danville, CA -- Bob Pack, who lost his seven year old daughter and ten year old son on a roadside nine years ago, filed a ballot measure in California today to address the drug overdose and physician accountability issues at the heart of his family’s tragedy.
HealthNet’s “Exchange” Rate Unreasonable
Consumer Watchdog's Public Comment On Health Net's CA "Exchange" Rates
Father To Medical Association: Apologize, Our Children’s Death Is Not A “Publicity Stuntâ€
Danville, CA -- The father of a seven and ten year old killed by a drug addicted driver who received thousands of pills she should never have had called on the California Medical Association to apologize for calling the effort by families injured by medical negligence to tell their stories and seek stronger patient safety laws “an ill-fated publicity stunt.”
CA Doctors Unaccountable For Harming Patients and the Public: Medical Board Took 4 Years to Suspend License of Doctor Who Bought Drugs & Alcohol...
Santa Monica, CA – The California Medical Board took four years to suspend the license of a Central Valley doctor who gave drugs and alcohol to minors, more evidence that doctors are unaccountable when they harm patients and the public in California, said Consumer Watchdog.