Health Insurance

The term "socialized medicine" may be losing its boogeyman status, according to a survey of voting-age adults. Long uttered in warnings against any sort of government involvement in healthcare, today the term has largely lost its scare power. That's according to a study led by Robert Blendon, professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health. "This is a term from the 1940s," Blendon says. "We wondered if anyone even knew what it meant anymore."

More Latinos are signing up for Obamacare coverage in California after a slow start, and the state is spending millions of dollars more on Spanish-language ads ahead of next month's enrollment deadline. The Covered California insurance exchange said Wednesday that 828,638 people overall have enrolled in private health plans through mid-February, and an additional 1 million Californians have been deemed eligible for an expansion of Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program. The pace of enrollment has dipped since late December's peak level when thousands of applicants rushed to meet a deadline for Jan. 1 coverage.

Woodland Hills insurer Health Net has agreed to pay as much as $14 million to settle a pair of lawsuits brought on behalf of 800 former policyholders whose coverage was dropped after they submitted substantial medical bills. Under the deal, which won preliminary court approval Wednesday, individuals whose health insurance policies were canceled since 2004 are eligible for payments of up to $218,000. The average payment is expected to be $7,836. The settlement would resolve a class-action lawsuit filed by Claremont lawyer William Shernoff, as well as a suit filed by Los Angeles City Atty.

Sarah Giron wants health insurance, but she says it's just not in her budget. "It's so expensive," says the 34-year-old stay-at-home mom in Riverside County. Her husband, an aerospace worker, gets health insurance at work at a very reasonable rate - just $25 is deducted from his paycheck every other week to cover the cost, she says. But family coverage that includes the Hemet mom and her 2-year-old daughter would cost around $700 a month, she says, and that's just too pricey. As companies increasingly raise the rates charged for family coverage, Giron's search for a separate insurance policy for her and her child highlights the many complications that consumers face today.

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said that the U.S. health care system is unfair to millions of Americans, and he called for the appointment of a presidential commission to draft a plan for change. In a commencement address to graduates of the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Koop catalogued the ills of the medical delivery and insurance system, laying particular emphasis on inequities. "Our current system of health care is not fair, it's not just and it's not the morally strong system this country deserves," he said.

Emergency room patients often must wait hours -- or sometimes days -- for treatment from specialists, largely because many doctors resist coming in unless they are assured adequate payment, according to a state report. The report released Wednesday by the California Senate Office of Research concluded that the crisis affects patients with and without health insurance. In some cases, patients are shuffled from hospital to hospital until an appropriate specialist is found, the report stated.

Secure Horizons, the nation's largest Medicare HMO, said Thursday it will freeze membership next year in 41 counties nationwide, most of them in California. The announcement that new members will not be accepted in 24 California counties, among them Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Kern, Alameda and Contra Costa, came as Secure Horizons' parent company reported disappointing results for the third quarter, though they beat estimates. Santa Ana-based PacifiCare Health Systems Inc.

Time's almost up. Monday is the last chance for consumers to sign up for Obamacare insurance that starts Jan. 1 under the federal healthcare law. Last-minute shoppers should prepare for busy signals if they call the Covered California insurance exchange, or for long waits at some enrollment events. There's been a sharp increase in applications in recent days ahead of Monday's deadline for January coverage, according to state officials, agents and enrollment counselors. More than 53,000 people enrolled in health plans over a three-day period last week.

Through the squalls and storms of the past few months, no one has been more doggedly upbeat about President Clinton's ambitious plan for national health care reform than senior adviser Ira Magaziner and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Magaziner, chief architect of Clinton's health care plan, took great delight in calling attention to his office bookshelves.

If you go online to shop for health insurance through California's exchange, Covered California, you may feel befuddled at times. An estimated 1.9 million Californians could qualify for a subsidy or tax credit, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. But to determine whether you're among them and apply, you'll need to report your income and the size of your family on the application. It seems straightforward enough. But many consumers are finding that the process can get complicated.

WASHINGTON - Fans of the Jet City Rollergirls are hearing public announcements about Obamacare when they go to the roller derby track north of Seattle. Univision, the nation's largest Spanish-language television network, is airing half-hour specials about healthy living and educating viewers about how to sign up for coverage under President Obama's health law. And tax preparers at thousands of Jackson Hewitt and H&R Block offices are talking to their customers about how to enroll in the new insurance plans sold through the law's online marketplaces.

In the new world of the sharing economy, companies such as Uber, Lyft and Sidecar have made a compelling case that government shouldn't treat them the same way it treats conventional service providers. They're not taxi companies; instead, they empower people to act as part-time limo drivers. But regulators still have to make sure that the public is protected when something goes wrong. A recent fatal accident involving a driver who used Uber highlights gaps in the insurance coverage that ride-sharing services, their drivers and state regulators can't ignore.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's healthcare law will reduce the ranks of the uninsured by about 13 million this year and 25 million once it is fully phased in, but will prompt some people to work less because of the availability of insurance subsidies, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday. The latest projections by the nonpartisan budget analysts inspired new talking points for both sides in the deeply polarized debate over the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

About a third of California college students report being uninsured and they said the primary reason was cost, not an aura of invincibility, according to a new survey. The results released Monday are based on a poll of 836 students at three Cal State University campuses last fall in Los Angeles, Fresno and San Jose. Enrollment among young people remains a top priority for government exchanges and other supporters of the healthcare law. The new insurance marketplaces need enough healthier policyholders to offset the costs of sicker, older customers.

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Thursday called Rep. Henry A. Waxman, the 20-term Democrat from Beverly Hills who announced he will retire at the end of the session, “one of the most accomplished legislators of his or any era.” Obama issued this statement on Waxman's retirement: “Early in the 20th century, Henry Waxman's grandparents came to America, the land of opportunity, and found a place where they could build a better life for themselves...

Thousands of Anthem Blue Cross individual customers with older insurance policies untouched by Obamacare are getting some jarring news: Their premiums are going up as much as 25%. These increases, 16% on average, are slated to go into effect April 1 for up to 306,000 people - unless California regulators persuade the state's largest for-profit health insurer to back down. Amid the fury last fall over canceled health policies, consumer advocates and state officials warned people that holding onto grandfathered policies purchased before the federal healthcare law was enacted in 2010 wouldn't shield them from significant rate hikes.

Re: Michael Hiltzik's business column "What do we need health insurers for?," Feb. 28: WellPoint's 39% premium rate hike is pure extortion from people who can't afford to give up health insurance. Seniors on Medicare don't live with 39% rate hikes because Medicare is not designed to enrich stockholders. If private insurers keep gouging policyholders, don't be surprised if you start having "town hall meetings" with people requesting Medicare or the public option. George Bruce Wells Seal Beach : : As a for-profit company, WellPoint and its ilk have priorities that are not compatible with what is best for the populace.

Aetna Inc. said it would stop selling individual health insurance policies in California next month, and nearly 50,000 existing policyholders will have to find new coverage by January. The company's announcement Monday comes a month after it opted not to participate in California's new state-run insurance market for consumers, a key component of the new federal healthcare law. Aetna was a distant fourth in the state's individual health market with a 5.2% market share in 2011, according to Citigroup data.

Health insurance giant WellPoint Inc. has signed up 500,000 people for Obamacare policies across the country, and it struck an upbeat tone about early enrollment trends under the healthcare law. WellPoint, which runs Anthem Blue Cross plans in California and 13 other states, said new enrollees tend to be older than current customers but that enrollment is in line with its projections and pricing for the new policies. "We do feel good about what we've seen in the exchanges so far," WellPoint Chief Executive Joseph Swedish said Wednesday during an earnings conference call with analysts and investors.

No matter how you count up the disparate numbers about the effects of some of our fellow Americans' infatuation with guns, the answer is the same: Our laws are killing and maiming us. The medical journal Pediatrics this week reported that, based on the most recent data from 2009, children are hospitalized for gunshot wounds at a rate of 20 a day, or one child every 72 minutes, for a total of 7,391 hospitalizations in 2009. Nine of 10 wounded kids are male, and disproportionately African American, which focuses the problem even more.