Tag Archives: Prop 45

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Teach Goliath A Lesson He’ll Never Forget

No candidate on the ballot this year can do as much for you as two propositions backed by Consumer Watchdog, Consumer Federation and other champions of the underdog.

YES ON PROP 45 will give us the power to stop price gouging by the health insurance companies.Congress requires us to buy health insurance, but they didn’t limit how much the insurance companies can charge us for it. That’s why we need Prop 45.

YES ON PROP 46 will make healthcare safer by preventing addicts from getting unnecessary prescription narcotics, requiring those who hold our lives in their hands to get tested for drugs, and allowing us to hold hospitals, doctors and insurance companies accountable when they injure us.

The insurance companies have spent over $100 million to defeat these pro-consumer propositions. They’ve bought off the politicians and paid for “studies” that predict disaster if these measures pass. And they’ve polluted the airwaves and the internet with outrageous lies about 45 and 46.

Let’s face it: our political system is corrupt. But, here in California, we voters can take matters into our own hands at the ballot box. We don’t have the money to compete with the industry, but – thanks to your support all these years – we have the truth on our side.

Tomorrow it will be 26 years since you joined me to pass Proposition 103 – the reform that stops insurance companies from overcharging us for auto, home and small business insurance. They said we could never defeat the insurance companies, but we did. They said it would never work…. But it did. California is the only state in the nation where auto insurance costs less today than it did in 1988! Prop 45 will extend that voter victory to health insurance.

Please join us again, tomorrow, by VOTING YES ON 45 AND 46.

Harvey Rosenfield

Founder – Consumer Watchdog

Health Care

Get Ready for Lots of Advertising: Props 45 and 46 Favored by Likely Voters

Proposition Yes No DK
45 – Justify Rates 69 16 15
46 – Drug Testing/Malpractice 58 30 12
47 – Sentencing 57 24 19

Measures draw ire of health insurance companies and doctors

by Brian Leubitz

The Field Poll has been doing a study of health care issues with the California Wellness Foundation, and today they released their numbers on the two health care related measures on the ballot. (Poll summary)

As you can see from the numbers to the right, the health insurance companies aren’t that popular. As you can see if you look a bit higher to the right, they are starting to spend on advertising. Their basic argument is that Prop 45 has some issues with possibly conflicting with Covered California. You can find lots of reports on both sides, and it is still something of an open question. Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones says that his office can easily handle the rate review process in the allotted period of time, and if he is right, then there shouldn’t be a problem. However, expect to see a lot of TV ads, mostly from the NO side.

On Prop 46, the malpractice limit is one of those issues that has split the Democratic party. Now, I have made my thoughts perfectly clear on MICRA, you can go back nearly five years when I wrote my first post on it, and I have further discussed it since. MICRA is great for malpractice insurance companies, because they get to keep hiking rates on doctors while their costs are controlled. But it is bad public policy.

Prop 46, though, has another element meant to curb substance abuse in doctors, and the terrible ramifications that has. That component has angered doctors and civil liberty groups, but has been popular with voters. All in all, the numbers are pretty healthy for the time being.

That being said, the opponents of Prop 46 have a lot of money, and will be using it this fall.

Prop 47, a sentencing reform measure, is good policy. However, it stands a decent shot of passage. There isn’t any big money opposed to this yet, but there is still time, I suppose.