Ronald Norton – Worcester, Massachusetts
<h3>Mandatory Private Insurance Is Unaffordable</h3>
Healthcare
Healthcare and patient-safety coverage — medical negligence, prescription drug prices, and your right to quality, affordable care.
Malpractice Law May Deny Justice
<strong>Lawyers, citing an award limit, often won't take medical injury suits.</strong>
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Dave Stewart's 72-year-old mother went to Stanford University Medical Center
for double knee-replacement surgery in April. Four days later, she was...</p>
Family suing Cigna after company refuses to pay for liver transplant, causing patient to die
<p class="source">CBS-TV Evening News (6:30 PM EST)</p>
<p>JOHN BLACKSTONE reporting: As 17-year-old Nataline Sarkisyan lay dying in the hospital, friends and nurses marched on the insurance company that had denied her a liver transplant. The company, Cigna, called the transplant experimental, not covered. Mr. JAMIE COURT (Consumer Watchdog): Insurers will call anything experimental if its got a six figure price tag.</p>
Delay in healthcare vote urged;
<h3>Labor and legislators haven't had time to vet the Nunez-backed plan, a union group says.</h3><p class="source">Los Angeles Times</p>
<p>Jerry Flanagan, the healthcare advocate with the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a Santa Monica-based nonprofit organization, said SEIU's organizing drive also stood to gain from the bill. He said one provision would allow retail clinics such as ones that Wal-Mart wants to establish to be staffed with medical assistants without a physician present.</p>
The wrong way to reform term limits; There’s a reason special interests are bankrolling Proposition 93.
<p class="source">Los Angeles Times</p>
<p>California's elected officials have failed this year to take care of any pressing state problems -- except their own. No healthcare reform. No prison reform. No solution to the multibillion-dollar budget deficit. Instead, this year's principal public policy result is a ballot measure to extend legislators' current terms in office. The biggest beneficiaries are the most powerful: Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate leader Don Perata, who otherwise would be forced out of office next year by term limits.</p>
The wrong way to reform term limits; There’s a reason special interests are bankrolling Proposition 93.
<p class="source">Los Angeles Times</p>
<p>California's elected officials have failed this year to take care of any pressing state problems -- except their own. No healthcare reform. No prison reform. No solution to the multibillion-dollar budget deficit. Instead, this year's principal public policy result is a ballot measure to extend legislators' current terms in office. The biggest beneficiaries are the most powerful: Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Senate leader Don Perata, who otherwise would be forced out of office next year by term limits.</p>
Politics, business as usual in health proposals?
<h3>Candidates' plans to bring little reform, don't address costs, analysts say</h3><p class="source">CBS MarketWatch.com</p>
<p>FTCR's Jerry Flanagan points out, however, that the double-digit rate increases by health insurers far exceeds the inflationary rate for doctors and hospitals, which has been estimated at 4% to 6% a year. Flanagan adds that insurers' overhead is out of whack, pointing out it runs roughly 20% to 25%, while overhead under the Medicare program is roughly 3%. And it will only get tougher to clamp down on runaway costs as merger activity is leaving the market with fewer insurers, Flanagan says. </p>
Workers defend hospital labor costs
<p class="source">Santa Cruz Sentinel</p>
<p>John Simpson, of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Los Angeles, agreed. Nurses, whose profession was once associated with lower wages, are finally making what they are worth, he said. "That they need to be able to be paid well enough to live where they work is a very sound argument," Simpson said. "I think that's, in fact, absolutely essential to making sure that there's quality health care for the people of California."</p>
Regulators aim to curb healthcare rescissions;
<h3>Rules would have firms check applicants' fitness before issuing policies.</h3><p class="source">Los Angeles Times</p>
<p>The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights had petitioned the agencies for rules against rescissions and said the first draft was disappointing. Spokesman Jerry Flanagan said that to protect consumers, regulators must step in and require that insurers prove policyholder misconduct before allowing a company to carry out a cancellation. "They've restated the law here fairly well, but that's not the point," Flanagan said. "They are supposed to establish a process for making sure that the cancellations are fair and patients are protected."</p>
Health plan shield proposed;
<h3>State agencies lay out regulations to halt cancellation of policies retroactively.</h3><p class="source">Sacramento Bee (California)</p>
<p>But one group criticized the proposal, saying the plan falls short of protecting consumers. "The rules will result in more litigation because patients will be forced to go to court when regulators fail to prevent illegal cancellations of coverage," Jerry Flanagan of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights said in a statement.</p>
WellPoint Doctors To Get Zagat Ratings
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While customer satisfaction is a factor in picking a doctor, some consumer advocates say it falls short. "The fact that a doctor might have a friendly administrator at the front desk is meaningless if they have a high medical-error rate," says Jerry Flanagan of the Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights.
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State HMOs treaded water in improving care, study says
<p class="source">Sacramento Bee (California)</p>
<p>One consumer group criticized the report, calling it shallow and incomplete. Jerry Flanagan of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights said the $500,000 report -- funded by state assessments collected from HMOs -- omits information about costs, specific consumer complaints and regulatory action against health plans. "The information in these things are vague. They provide no real help to consumers," Flanagan said. "They have gone out of their way to leave out the worst practices."</p>