Consumer Watchdog

"The industry is poised to expand, and they are really going after insurance companies and employers," said Judy Dugan, research director and health policy advocate for Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit, nonpartisan consumer advocacy group in California. "That's where the money is," Ms. Dugan said...

... Dashboard doesn't really give users any clearer insights into what the company is doing with all of the data it collects...

Late Addition to House Health Reform Bill Should Adopt Key Details of Successful Insurance Regulation in California to Achieve Cost Controls, Says Group Washington, D.C...

Google launched an application Thursday that allows users to see what data is stored in their accounts, but at least one group says the effort doesn't go far enough...

Billionaire insurance executive George Joseph has launched a California ballot initiative that would allow insurers to give discounts to long-term customers and, critics contend, punish those who have gone without coverage – despite a voter-approved law banning the latter practice. ...

Group Calls for 'Make-Me-Anonymous' Button On Home Page SANTA MONICA, CA -- The new Google Dashboard touted by the Internet giant as offering users “transparency, choice and control” of user data stored by the company doesn’t give consumers adequate control over protecting their information from ...

The consumer advocacy group at the center of the flap about Jerry Brown’s ex-spokesman secretly recording phone calls has sent a formal demand to the Attorney General’s office, seeking all internal documents that could shed light on the matter. Th...

"All warfare is based on deception," goes the famous line attributed to Sun Tzu in the Art of War. It may very well be the operating principle that both Google and Microsoft have taken to heart in their battle for dominance of the office desktop and cloud...

Mercury Insurance is behind a measure to roll back part of the 1988 Proposition 103 and allow insurance rates based partly on the basis of a driver's record of having insurance coverage or not. Not on a driver's record of tickets and/or accidents - nobody argues with that...

Car insurance by the tankful? Not quite, but California moved a step closer last month to pay-as-you-drive policies that could allow motorists to buy insurance like they do gasoline -- a little at a time...

A spokesman for Attorney General Jerry Brown who admitted last week that he had secretly recorded telephone conversations with journalists, including a reporter for The Chronicle, resigned Monday...

The following Op-Ed commentary by Judy Dugan was published in The Los Angeles Times on Tuesday, November 3, 2009: If the reforms being decided in Washington don't clearly reduce costs...

Only the vastly under-seen cartoonist Tom Tomorrow could mash up the public option, Joe Lieberman and Harry Reid, and make a tragicomedy of it. See it here, or below.