Health Insurance

Anthem Blue Cross, the state's largest for-profit health insurer, has agreed to pay a $1-million fine and offer new coverage -- no questions asked -- to 2,330 people it dropped after they submitted bills for expensive medical care. As part of a deal that the California Department of Insurance is set to announce today, Anthem also will offer to reimburse those people for medical expenses that they paid out of pocket after they were dropped.

For people who've assumed they'll take the option of continuing their employer-based health insurance -- at their own expense -- if they lose their jobs during 2009, it was sobering news. For those who have lost their jobs, it was painfully unsurprising.

California regulators said Monday that insurers must provide speech, occupational and physical therapies to their autistic members but rejected pleas to require insurers to cover the cost of behavior therapy that aims to help patients live in society. At issue is so-called applied behavior analysis, a therapy that teaches patients skills such as self-feeding and stopping injurious behaviors such as head banging. The therapy can cost as much as $70,000 a year per patient.

Are the healthcare bills pending in the House and Senate unconstitutional? That's what some of the bills' critics have alleged. Their argument focuses on the fact that most of the major proposals would require all Americans to obtain healthcare coverage or pay a tax if they don't. Those too poor to afford insurance would have their health coverage provided by the state. Although the desirability of this approach can be debated, it unquestionably would be constitutional. Those who claim otherwise make two arguments.

The genius of modern marketing is pouring old material into new packaging. Over the years this has given us yogurt in tubes, prechopped salad greens in cellophane bags and, most recently, the health insurance industry's new image as a friend of reform.

Dena Lansford, 49, would like to have a cholesterol check, a mammogram and, soon, a colonoscopy. She hasn't seen a dentist in more than a year. She worries that she might suffer a similar fate as her mother, who had a stroke at 47. But after losing her job and health insurance last year, the Wildomar woman said, "I'm not doing any preventive care." As of February, an estimated 3.

California insurers are discriminating against women, charging them more for individual health insurance than men, the city of San Francisco maintained in a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the state regulators who govern them.

John Peeler, an unemployed computer technician in South Carolina, may soon get health insurance for his wife and three children. Four months after being laid off, he is one of the lucky jobless Americans who could receive thousands of dollars in government subsidies from the new stimulus plan. Susan McKowen, a 62-year-old breast cancer survivor from Illinois, is not so fortunate.

As Democratic leaders prepare to bring healthcare legislation before the full House and Senate for votes this month, they soon must decide who will be taxed to pay for expanding coverage -- the wealthy or the insurance companies. Legislation emerging from the House would slap a surtax on upper-income people. But many Democrats, especially in the Senate, fear the political fallout over voting to raise anyone's income taxes. The most prominent Senate bill would impose a tax on insurance companies that provide expensive policies, sometimes dubbed "Cadillac" plans.

If you've lost your job, you need to act fast to maintain adequate health insurance. You have to decide, within 60 days of your separation, whether you want to stay on your former employer's plan through COBRA, the federal Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. -- What is COBRA? COBRA is a federal law that requires your former employer to offer health insurance under the company plan to jettisoned workers for 18 months or more. -- What does it cost?