Consumer Group Sues Over Health Insurance Increases

Burrill Report
Podcast: March 8, 2010

Anthem Blue Cross, Californias biggest for-profit health insurance company, has been on the hot seat lately. Its plan to raise premiums for individuals by as much as 39 percent landed the CEO of its parent company, Wellpoint, in front of a Congressional committee and reignighted efforts in Washington to pass healthcare reform legislation. Now the advocacy group ConsumerWatchdog has filed a class-action lawsuit against Anthem over the rate increases saying they violate California law. We spoke to Jerry Flanagan, healthcare policy director for ConsumerWatchdog, about his groups lawsuit, what Anthems actions mean for reform, and why the proposed healthcare legislation wouldnt have prevented Anthem from instituting the rate increases in the first place. http://www.burrillreport.com/article-2193.html

New Approaches To Treatment Needed In Pediatric Cancer – Patient Podcast Series #3

In this third in a series of podcasts focused on rare disease patient advocates jointly produced by The Burrill Report, the California Healthcare Institute, and the Children’s Rare Disease Network, we speak to Susan Cornelius, business advisor to The Nicholas Conor Institute for Pediatric Cancer Research. When her granddaughter struggled against cancer, she was frustrated that new technology was unavailable to her and that all doctors could offer were surgery, radiation or chemotherapy – what she characterized as cut, burn, or poison the child for a disease, in her granddaughter’s case, that was genetically-based. Cornelius lost her granddaughter to cancer in 2008, but now works to bring about changes to the way cancer research is conducted.