Health Insurance

Every year, Santa Ana strawberry farmer Mack Ramsay pores over health insurance plans for his 35 employees, checking out prices, coverage, deductibles and other fine print from giants like Blue Cross, Blue Shield and Aetna. For 21 years he has chosen instead a little-known, nonprofit healthcare cooperative based in Irvine that provides insurance to about 15,000 Californians and Arizonans mostly working in agriculture.

Senate Democrats debating how to overhaul America's healthcare system are moving toward a showdown over whether to create a government-run insurance program or set up a system of cooperatives instead. A government plan, an idea President Obama endorses, is a centerpiece of the legislation being developed by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and fellow liberals.

President Obama signed legislation Wednesday to expand publicly funded health insurance for children, marking a historic shift in Washington's political landscape and providing the White House its biggest victory since Obama took office. Less than two years ago, former President George W. Bush blocked similar bills by congressional Democrats, labeling the proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program as a step toward government-run healthcare.

If you're about to find yourself out of college and in the market for health insurance, take a deep breath. And then: Learn the terms of your current coverage. If you haven't done so already, check your current plan. You may have a grace period for a few months after graduation, you may be covered for graduate school, or the coverage age might be extendable, even if you've graduated.

Opponents have unleashed a torrent of hyperbolic claims and heated invective in an effort to stop President Obama's healthcare reform. But the president shouldn't be surprised by the rhetoric. Three-quarters of a century ago, nearly identical denunciations were used in an attempt to kill legislation that created one of the country's most popular government programs: Social Security. Though no one was talking about "death panels" back then, opponents claimed that Social Security would result in massive government control.

California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner plans to unveil proposed regulations today to combat the health insurance industry practice of dropping members with costly illnesses. Poizner's draft regulations would require insurers to write applications for coverage in plain English and allow applicants a "not sure" answer to questions about their preexisting medical conditions.

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.

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."

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.

Workers laid off by California's smallest businesses have a shot at subsidized healthcare under a bill moving quickly through the Legislature. As part of February's stimulus package, some laid-off employees can get the government to temporarily cover 65% of the cost of continuing their health insurance under the federal COBRA law, which allows workers to keep their healthcare coverage but requires them to pay the premiums.