Category: Insurance

News anchor Bernie Lange leaves KKCO, moves to KREX

Welcome to KREX, Bernie Lange

Award-winning, long time local news anchor Bernie Lange has left KKCO and will start working at KREX-TV Channel 5 on Monday, March 25 as the station’s main anchor for their 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts. He has more than 20 years experience in broadcast journalism.

Bernie grew up in Lakewood, graduated from the University of Colorado, started his career in Rapid City, South Dakota and came to Grand Junction in 1998.

Bernie is a familiar face in the area, having worked in broadcast news in Grand Junction on and off since around 2006. He has been a news anchor, executive producer, and reporter at KJCT News 8 and KKCO NBC 11 News. He left Grand Junction for two years be a news anchor in Burlington, Vermont for WVNY/WFFF-TV. He returned in 2018.

Baby RMHP denied health insurance coverage to in 2009

Some of us remember back in 2009 when Bernie and his family became emblems of America’s broken health care system after Rocky Mountain Health Plans (PMHP) denied health insurance coverage to Bernie’s then four month-old baby, Alex, saying it was because the baby was too fat, and the pre-existing condition of obesity made him too high of a risk. Alex was still breastfeeding at the time. Bernie said, “I could understand if we could control what he’s eating, but he’s 4 months old. He’s breast-feeding. We can’t put him on the Atkins diet or on a treadmill. There is just something absurd about denying an infant.” When the baby was ready for solid food, Bernie joked, they would put him on Slim Fast.

Bernie, an expert in communications, public relations, advertising and public policy, launched a national campaign citing the absurdity of the incident and promoting the need for children’s health care. The campaign got media coverage from The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, CNN, The Daily Show, Fox News, KUSA-9 News and Fox31 News and resulted in RMHP changing its policy and insuring the infant.

KREX News Director, Terri Chappell, said “I had the chance to work with Bernie many years ago, and we feel very fortunate to be able to hire someone with his integrity, experience, journalist ethics, and track record of community involvement.”

KREX was the first TV station on the western slope and aired its first newscast on May 22, 1954.

KREX TV News has won acclaim from the public recently for fearlessly covering news stories that were important to the community but other local news outlets were reticent to cover, like the questionable business practices occurring at Red Rock Auto Group and concerns about lead contamination and the potential for lead poisoning at the new home of the Ascent Classical Academy charter school, which purchased the old Rocky Mountain Gun Club as its new school building. Lead contamination in indoor shooting ranges is a known public health threat, and children are particularly susceptible to lead poisoning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rep. Tipton votes to cut Medicaid, CHIP

House Rep. Scott Tipton has voted against financial transparency in government, against protecting citizens’ access to health insurance, against working families and to protect wealthy Americans and keep their taxes low. He’s up for re-election this year.

On February 6, 2020 House Rep. Scott Tipton voted in favor of cutting funding for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), federal programs that cover poor children, pregnant women, the elderly and disabled people with health insurance who could not otherwise afford it.

Tipton voted “no” on House Resolution 826 (HR-826), a measure brought by Democrats that condemned Trump’s cuts to the federal safety net programs that protect Americans who have fallen on hard times.

Taking away health insurance

More than one million children have lost Medicaid and CHIP health insurance coverage under President Trump, and over 750,000 adults have lost Medicaid coverage. Trump’s latest budget calls for even more cuts to Medicaid and the and Affordable Care Act, and it includes deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare, while extending tax cuts for wealthy people, despite his promise he would not touch Social Security or Medicare.

G.J. Chamber Opposes Patient Choice in Pharmacies

No-choiceThe Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce in their Monday, April 11 ad in the Daily Sentinel, announced that it OPPOSES Colorado House Bill HB 16-1361, the “Patient Choice in Pharmacy” bill, which would prohibit health insurance companies from restricting subscribers’ ability to select a pharmacy or pharmacist of their choice. The bill also prohibits insurance companies from imposing extra co-payments, fees or restrictions on subscribers if they choose to use a pharmacy outside the insurance company’s network, as long the pharmacy/pharmacist has a valid CO license and meets some other criteria.

The G.J Chamber opposes citizens’ ability to freely choose where to shop for medications. Without this bill, smaller locally-owned pharmacies that are not in an insurance company’s network will lose businesses to bigger chains stores or mail order pharmacies that insurance companies tell subscribers they have to use.

Once again, the Chamber opposes a measure that would help smaller and locally-owned businesses, and that is beneficial to all citizens and working people.

 

Poor and Uninsured in Texas? Tough Luck, Says Gov. Rick Perry

Texas Governor Rick Perry

Texas is number one in the country for people without health insurance. Fully one quarter of Texans have no health insurance at all. Another 26% are on Medicaid, Medicare or other public assistance programs that provide help to get health care, according to the Texas Medical Association. The poverty rate in Texas is also high. Twenty-one percent of adults, 17% of the elderly and 34% of  Texas’ children live in poverty.  Despite these dire circumstances, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is refusing an offer from the federal government to expand Medicaid, even though the feds will pick up 100% of the cost for the first three years. The reimbursement rate will drop to 90 percent after that. The offer is part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” a slate of changes to health insurance enacted in the U.S. that Gov. Perry and some other Republican governors dislike. Last July, Perry wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last July (pdf) in which he called the offer to expand Medicaid a “gun to the head” of his state. He called the Affordable Care Act a “power grab,” and reiterated that statement in a November 18 blog post on his  personal website. By refusing to accept the federal assistance to expand Medicaid, Gov. Perry is turning down $164 billion that would go to help insure the poorest Texas citizens. The assistance would also stimulate Texas’ economy.  An analysis by the Center for Public Priorities, a think tank based in Austin, found that every federal dollar the state would spend on Medicaid assistance would return $1.29 in “dynamic state government revenue” over the first ten years of expansion, since Medicaid expenditures generate economic activity while creating a healthier, more productive population.

Freedom from Religion Foundation Urges Protests Against Religious Domination

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) based in Madison, Wisconsin is pushing back against a new coalition, “Stand up for Religious Freedom,” led by the Pro-Life Action League and Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, that is leading a nationwide rally June 8 to “stop the HHS mandate.” The religious groups oppose a provision in the Obama administration’s new health insurance law that requires most private health insurers cover FDA-approved prescription contraceptive drugs and devices, including the “morning after pill.” The Department of Health and Human Services’ so-called mandate includes an exemption for religious employers who object to contraception, and the rule does not apply to any churches, but that doesn’t go far enough for these organizations, which are trying to block all financial assistance with contraceptives. Moreover, the Catholic Bishops have introduced into Congress the so-called “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” which goes even further than banning financial help with contraceptives. The Bishops’ bill would allow any private employer with a “religious or moral objection” to veto coverage for specific treatments for employees. For example, an employer who is a Jehovah’s Witnesses could bar coverage of emergency blood transfusions for its employees, and a Southern Baptist or Mormon employer could deny prescription birth control to its single, female employees.

Health Insurers Shake Down Subscribers for Prescriptions

Big health insurers have found yet another new way to extort customers — by buying up “pharmacy benefit managers,” (companies that supply medications to people) and then forcing subscribers to buy medications exclusively from the drug distributors they own. People are receiving letters from their health insurance companies telling them they must either buy medications from a specific company they own and get medications through the mail, or patronize a retail drug store of their choice and pay a much higher price. Prices may be lower for insurance companies under this kind of arrangement, but policyholders miss out on face-to-face interaction with pharmacists, who verbally counsel customers on drug dosing instructions and dangerous interactions with other drugs. Herding people towards a single option drug supplier is also taking a toll on neighborhood pharmacies who have been serving the same families for generations. The trend towards consolidation in the drug sales market starkly limits consumer choice. Just three major pharmacy benefit management companies dominate the drug delivery market: Express Scripts Holding, which recently bought Medco for $29 billion, CVS Caremark, and OptumRX, a subsidiary that now belongs to the big health insurance company UnitedHealthcare Group.

Source: Los Angeles Times (consumer advocate David Lazarus), May 4, 2012

Can Wall Street Fund Universal Healthcare in U.S.?

National Nurses United support a tiny financial transaction tax to pay for universal healthcare in the U.S.

Over a thousand activists including members of National Nurses United marched in New York City April 26 to demand the government levy a tiny tax — just 0.5 percent — on speculative financial trades to fund universal health care in the United States. The idea is to add a small sales tax to Wall Street transactions of stocks, dividends and other financial deals, just like the tax ordinary consumers pay when they buy goods at a department store. The proposed tax, just one-half of one percent, would amount to just 50 cents on every $100 worth of financial transactions, but it would add up to a huge amount of money: about $350 billion each year. The tax wouldn’t apply to ordinary consumer transactions like ATM use, debit card purchases or home loans, and traders would be barred from passing the costs of the tax on to consumers. The main targets of the a tax are the big financial firms whose risky trading led to the meltdown of the global economy, like Citibank, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. These four firms alone account for almost a quarter of the entire global market volume on trades of currency. The tiny tax would take advantage of a huge increase in speculative financial activity over the past decade to benefit Americans’ access to health care. A financial transaction tax isn’t a new idea. The U.S. had such a tax in place from 1914 to 1966. The idea of a financial transaction tax is gaining acceptance has been endorsed by conservative presidents in France and Germany, as well as former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Blue Cross Blue Shield and American Traffic Solutions Dump ALEC

The corporate exodus out of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) continued today as insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield and the Arizona-based traffic services company American Traffic Solutions (ATS) both announced that they would not renew their membership in ALEC this year. ThinkProgress created an internet-based bulletin board listing the companies that have left ALEC so far.  In addition to Blue Cross and ATS, the bulletin board lists Reed-Elsevier, Mars, Wendy’s, McDonalds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pepsi, Kraft, Intuit and Coca Cola. The bulletin board site has quickly gained hundreds of followers. ALEC is the controversial “Stand Your Ground” group that helps corporations gain direct contact with predominantly conservative Republican legislators for the purpose of spreading pro-corporate legislation around the country.

Main Source: Think Progress, April 17, 2012

Switch to a Good-Faith Insurer

Everyone who buys insurance should visit the website Fight Bad-Faith Insurance Companies (FBIC), at BadFaithInsurance.org. FBIC lists insurers who chronically screw consumers by discounting, lowballing, fudging and delaying payment of legitimate claims. FBIC  examines formal complaints lodged against insurers and reviews documents obtained through litigation against insurers to sort out good insurers from bad. FBIC finds that many well known insurers frequently act unethically and illegally. Consumers have virtually no recourse against these companies either, because government agencies that regulate the insurance industry are not only toothless and underfunded, but they are also often staffed by former insurance people.

Even worse, bad-faith insurers dominate the market. FBIC’s list of the top 50 bad-faith insurers contains many of the same insurers that advertise constantly on television. The worst company, State Farm (which FBIC rates  “DO NOT BUY” in big, red letters), is followed closely by The Hartford and Allstate, which now owns E-surance. FBIC rates all three with a big, red “DO NOT BUY.” Liberty Mutual, Progressive, Geico, Mercury, UnitedHealth, WellPoint and Blue Cross Blue Shield are close behind. Fortunately, FBIC also lists the top 50 good-faith insurers — a shrinking list of companies that, for the most part, act ethically and responsibly toward customers and conduct business in accordance with the law. The list of good-faith insurers is topped by companies you’ve probably never heard of: Amica, Allianz and Chubb. Maybe these companies don’t carpet-bomb us with ads because their reputations are good enough to provide them with all the business they need.

After reading FBIC’s website, my husband and I switched our homeowner and vehicle insurance from Farmers to Chubb. We were surprised to find Chubb offered much higher quality insurance for about the same money. For example, in the event that you total your car, Chubb pays enough to go out buy a brand new car exactly like the one you had, instead of just giving you blue book for your wrecked one. Rental cars are covered in full under Chubb’s policy, and if you get personal liability coverage, Chubb provides $50,000 worth of identity theft coverage, including paying professionals to help you get your identity back and deal with problems caused by the theft.

Insurance is one area where you can vote with your money. Read Fight Bad Faith Insurance Companies’ reviews and move your business to an insurance company that treats consumers fairly, abides by the law and deals in good faith.