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).
Will HHS exceptions become the rule?
HHS’s head of insurance oversight Steve Larsen got heat from a hostile House committee this afternoon, where he was asked why, if the federal health reform law is so great, is HHS granting waivers to its rules?
Insurers Could Keep Reasons for Double-Digit Rate Hikes Secret Under Federal Rate Review Regulation
Washington, DC– Health insurance companies will escape public scrutiny of double-digit rate hikes if the US Department of Health and Human Services fails to strengthen rate review disclosure forms proposed this week, said Consumer Watchdog.
Health Insurance Brokers, State Insurance Commissioners, Seek to Cripple Key Consumer Protection in Health Reform
Washington DC – The lobby for health insurance salespeople seeks to rewrite the health reform law to guarantee broker income at the cost of increasing consumer premiums, said Consumer Watchdog Thursday.
HHS Rewards States That Reject Excessive Health Insurance Rate Hikes
HHS struck a blow for affordable health insurance yesterday when it announced that $27.5 million in extra grant money will be available to states that have the power to modify and deny excessive insurance rate hikes.
Landmark “Do Not Track Me” Bill To Block Unwanted Spying on the Internet, Says Consumer Watchdog
WASHINGTON, DC — “Do Not Track Me” legislation introduced in Congress today by Rep. Jackie Speier, D-CA, will let consumers block unwanted tracking of their information online, said the nonprofit Consumer Watchdog at a press conference today with the bill author and consumer and privacy advocates.