The “Better Sick Than Subsidized” Plan to Cut the Deficit
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Insurance
Insurance news, investigations, and reform — auto, home, and health insurance rates, claims denials, and industry accountability.
Sparks Fly In Fight Over Health-Care Regulation
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An intense political flap has left one of the year’s most important pieces of legislation stalled on the Senate floor and the removal of a consumer advocacy group’s disputed TV spot targeting the chair of the Senate Health Committee.</p>
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The Democrat-on-Democrat fight between Senate moderates and the rest of the caucus also raised eyebrows in the Capitol about Consumer Watchdog, a highly visible advocacy group that goes after insurers and other deep-pocket interests on behalf of consumers.</p>
Susan Braig – Altadena, CA
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Seven years ago, at age 54, I was self-employed and of modest means, but completely debt-free. I had health insurance, but rarely made a claim. Today I am a 62-year old uninsured cancer survivor on the verge of bankruptcy from medical debt. I am too young for Medicare, too early for the Affordable Care Act and I have a pre-existing condition that denies me private insurance even if I could afford it.</p>
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I am sharing my story in the hope it will lead to affordable health insurance that will help millions of people like me when they need it the most.</p>
Janet Kassouf – Hayward, CA
<p><strong>Blue Cross rate hikes</strong></p>
<p>My family has a Blue Cross individual family PPO. This year the premium alone is $2222 a month—that’s $26,664 a year. The policy cost only $495 a month in 2002. As recently as 2009 the premium was just over $1500 a month. So in two years the annual cost is up $8400 a year and my deductible is up during the same period from $1500 to $1725. My copays are up as well, from 20% to 30%.</p>
Mary Feller – Santa Rosa, CA
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<strong><img class=" size-full wp-image-2265" alt="" class="right" src="https://consumerwatchdog.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/images_fellers.jpg" style="width: 258px; height: 345px;" width="478" height="640" />Blue Cross Rate Hikes</strong></p>
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I’m a freelance entertainment writer and my husband is an international urban development consultant. So, we don’t have employer health insurance. We’ve have had an individual Blue Cross family policy since 1992. When we first signed on, the cost was $203 a month for our family of three. In 2001 we were still only paying $318 a month.</p>
Cathy Kay – Sherman Oaks, CA
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I have a Blue Cross PPO Share 2500 individual plan and just got my premium invoice for May 1<sup>st</sup>. My premium increases by 17.3%, on top of a 19% increase last fall. That means my premium, which was $526 per month last October (prior to the fall increase), will now be $736. In October of 2008, my premium was only $441. In addition, only four months into this year, my annual deductible is increasing from $2500 to $2950, my annual maximum is increasing from $7,500 to $8,850 and all of the other copays are going up substantially as well.</p>
“Fracking” for natural gas gets some attention, but so far it’s just yakking
<p><img class=" alignright size-full wp-image-2206" alt="" src="https://consumerwatchdog.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/images_judydrawingname.gif" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; float: right; width: 133px; height: 200px; " width="133" height="200" />Exxon Mobil, which is making big bets worldwide on hydraulic fracturing for deeply buried natural gas, is also making big bets on its <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ExxonMobil">sincere, earnest advertising</a> about clean, safe natural gas. The ads turn me into a crazy person, yelling at the television during halftimes and seventh-inning stretches.</p>
Amazon Goes After Apple with $199 Tablet
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Amazon, the ubiquitous Web retailer, took aim Wednesday at Apple's white-hot successby offering a tablet computer at less than half the price of the iPad.<br />
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Armed with a massive retailing operation and a vast catalogue of movies, books and music, Amazon, with its $199 Kindle Fire, may pose the most significant challenge to one of Apple's signature products by making its multimedia device far less expensive to consumers, analysts said.<br />
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Annuities Protection Bill Signed by California Governor
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The Annuities Protection Bill (Assembly Bill 689) signed by California Governor Jerry Brown on September 21, 2011 is primarily meant to “help protect the hard-earned financial security of Californians, especially seniors, and end an alarming breeding ground for fraud,” according to the bill’s author Assemblyman Bob Blumenfield, D-San Fernando. The bill passed the State Assembly by a 75-0 vote and the Senate by a 34-0 vote. It was also supported by AARP, the Consumer Watchdog, and the California Department of Insurance.</p>
The Danger of Making Auto Insurance Unaffordable [The Reply]
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Auto insurance could become too expensive for some Californians if George Joseph, chairman of insurer Mercury General Corp., gets his way. He's proposed an initiative for the June 2012 ballot that would reward longtime insured drivers but could ultimately price out the people who haven't previously or consistently been insured. In a <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-court-mercury-20110921,0,4087545.story">Sept. 21 Op-Ed</a>, Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, helped people read between the lines:</p>
Does Employer-Sponsored Health Care Still Make Sense?
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<a href="http://www.scpr.org/programs/patt-morrison/2011/09/27/20847/does-employer-sponsored-health-care-still-make-sen/">Click here to listen to the audio of this radio broadcast</a>.</p>
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Having trouble affording your health insurance? A new study out today shows that health premiums are rising at 9% a year, far outpacing increases in inflation and wages. Families are now paying $15,000 per year in insurance premiums on average.</p>