Consumer Watchdog’s President and Chairman of the Board is an award-winning and nationally recognized consumer advocate. Capitol Weekly, naming Jamie to its “Top 100” list of unelected movers and shakers in California politics, wrote, “Court has made a career of battling all comers in the interest of the public, and his take-no-prisoners approach has earned him plenty of enemies.”
Jamie’s latest book is The Progressive’s Guide To Raising Hell: How To Win Grassroots Campaigns, Pass Ballot Box Laws And Get The Change You Voted For (Chelsea Green, 2010). “Americans angry about the state of their government might find in Court’s persuasive manifesto a cause for action,” Publishers Weekly writes. “With great accessibility and a fired-up attitude, Court brings his lessons in empowerment to the people.” He is also the author of Corporateering: How Corporate Power Steals Your Freedom And What You Can Do About It (Tarcher Putnam, 2003) and co-author of Making A Killing: HMOs and the Threat To Your Health (Common Courage Press, 1999).
Jamie has led dozens of major corporate and political campaigns to reform insurers, banks, technology companies, oil companies, utilities and political practices. He helped to pioneer the HMO patients’ rights movement in the United States, sponsoring successful laws in California and aiding them elsewhere, and was an early champion of many of the most important consumer protections in the federal Affordable Care Act years before they were enacted. He authored the health insurance rate regulation reform Proposition 45 on the November 2014 California ballot.
A frequent media commentator and op-ed contributor, Jamie is a high-profile and stalwart defender of consumers’ rights. The Los Angeles Times calls him “a tireless consumer advocate.” The Wall Street Journal writes, “He’s notorious for his dramatic, sharp-tongued attacks on the health- and auto-insurance industries, and on any politician who takes their campaign cash.”
His public interest career began as an advocate for the homeless and as a community organizer. Jamie’s Alma mater is Pomona College, where he graduated with a BA in History in 1989.
Consumer Watchdog Campaign: Ballot Initiative to Make Health Insurance Companies Justify Rates Should Have Qualified for 2012 Ballot According to Official Signature Count Released...
Santa Monica, CA – Data released today by the Secretary of State shows a ballot measure to require health insurance companies to publicly justify rate increases should have been on the ballot this November, but was unnecessarily delayed to 2014 due to a flawed signature verification process, said Consumer Watchdog Campaign.
Consumer Watchdog Campaign: Initiative To Make Health Insurance Companies Publicly Justify Their Rates Qualifies for the California Ballot – Excessive Rates Could End In...
Santa Monica, CA – The California Secretary of State announced today that a ballot initiative to require health insurance companies to publicly justify and get approval for rate increases before they take effect has qualified for the 2014 ballot.
Consumer Watchdog Campaign: Long Term Unemployed Targeted Under Prop 33 For Rate Hikes – NY Times Front Page Report Shows Face of Californians In...
Los Angeles, CA --- A front page story in the New York Times about hundreds of thousands Californians who have been unemployed long term brings into focus the faces of Californians who will be unfairly surcharged under insurance-industry based Prop 33, said Consumer Watchdog Campaign, which is fighting the ballot measure.
Consumer Watchdog Campaign: Mercury Insurance Proponents of Prop 33 Resort to Lies (Again); Misquote Court Record
Santa Monica, CA -- In a press release today, Mercury Insurance Chairman George Joseph's Proposition 33 campaign misrepresented the in-court statements of Consumer Watchdog's attorneys in Sacramento Superior Court, claiming the attorney told the Court that "the truth is elastic." The court rejected all of the Prop 33 campaign's legal challenges and Consumer Watchdog's attorneys never made the s
Consumer Watchdog Campaign: Total Victory: Judge Upholds Attorney General’s Ballot Label & All Consumer Advocates’ Ballot Arguments That Prop 33 Deregulates Insurance Rates
Sacramenro, CA -- Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley rejected in full arguments in a lawsuit by the insurance industry backers of Proposition 33 and upheld the Attorney General’s Ballot Label as “Changes Law to Allow Auto Insurance Companies to Set Prices Based on a Driver's History of Insurance Coverage.”
Revenge of the Insurance Deregulators
Sacramento loves to hate Consumer Watchdog, because we expose the dirty deeds politicians do for corporations, confront regulators who are asleep at the switch, and don’t believe you have to go along with big corporations to get along. We also take on the rich and powerful in the initiative process on behalf of consumers, which the legislature and lobbyists consider a slap in the face.
Mandatory Health Insurance, Upheld By Supreme Court Today, Needs Rate Regulation As Next Step To Make Coverage Affordable
Washington, DC & Santa Monica, CA – Today’s decision by the United States Supreme Court to uphold the Affordable Care Act and its mandate that individuals purchase health insurance makes rate regulation the next essential phase of health reform, said Consumer Watchdog today.