If money is the mother milk of politics, then big bucks from the banks and financial industry are souring financial reform legislation being debated in the House of Representatives this week. A new analysis by Consumer Watchdog shows just how rotten the Capitol Hill dairy is.

Thirty-four members of...

The President is rightly proposing using government money to help hire more Americans. Back at his house, Obama should set an example for Congress by rehiring consumer advocates at the White House Office of Consumer Affairs who have been deposed since the G.W. Bush era.

It's rare that you get to hear what's in the brain of a powerful politician because his phone conversations were taped.

Listening to Jerry Brown opine, berate and spin reporters about their age, his age, what they should and should not be reporting on, and his superiority to other...

President Obama is coming to San Francisco tonight for a Democratic fundraiser. He owes the San Franciscans he will meet, in the city that has been the epicenter of progressive politics in America, some honest answers about how his health care plan lives up to the progressive legacy.

The head of the American health insurance lobby, Karen Ignani, is urging Congress to double the tax penalties for Americans who don't buy mandatory health insurance. That's right, health insurers are hopping mad that the guaranteed market that Congress and the president are about to deliver them -- full...

The most emailed story on the LA Times website right now is this Steve Lopez column, "It's Funny What Passes For Offensive," about how Mercury Insurance pressured CBS Outdoors to pull down Consumer Watchdog's billboard mid-contract but a few blocks away there remains...

Wednesday's presidential address to Congress is the moment for President Obama to prove he is a real outsider, and the fate of genuine health care reform depends upon it.

The President promised the public during the campaign he would be a Washington whistleblower. Obama said he would haul drug company...

Here's the the Los Angeles billboard, a few blocks from Mercury Insurance's corporate headquarters, that the insurance company pressured CBS Outdoor to take down today. CBS folded and removed the billboard without even a word of warning to its client, my consumer group Consumer Watchdog.

New data from California unearthed by the California Nurses Association reveals denial rates by the top health insurers in America. Talk about "death panels"? PacifiCare's rate of denying claims is 40%, CIGNA's is 33%.

Overall one in five requests for treatment is denied by California health insurers regulated...

If the City of Los Angeles can put a prescription drug bulk purchasing card in the hands of every resident, why can't the United States of America? That's the question I asked myself at the press conference announcing "LA Rx."

The fury of the ferocious Station fire bearing down on...

Every major economic downtown has its Scrooge, the opportunistic capitalist who preys on working people when they are hurting the worst. A ballot measure cleared for circulation by California Attorney General Jerry Brown moves Mercury Insurance CEO and founder George Joseph high up on the...

Jamie Court Debates FOX's Talking Heads On The Merits Of Public Option Health Care from Consumer Watchdog on Vimeo.

Being a progressive on Fox News feels a lot like being...

The head of the health insurance lobby, Karen Ignagni, is crying fowl about being demonized by Democrats trying to complete health insurance reform in Washington.  After all, haven't the insurers been playing nice on Capitol Hill, agreeing to sell everyone a health insurance policy so long as the government...

Wendell Potter from Consumer Watchdog on Vimeo.

I introduced him in San Francisco at the Civil Justice Foundation last week as...

I never thought I would own GM, or even a piece of it, when I was an eight year old kid playing in my dad's parked, sky blue Oldsmobile Cutlass. But all of us Americans are inches from owning the new GM with a bankruptcy court ruling approving the deal.

Parents of autistic children gathered this morning at Consumer Watchdog's Los Angeles headquarters to announce a lawsuit against Governor Schwarzenegger's administration for allowing health insurers to refuse to pay for Applied Behavioral Analysis ("ABA"), an essential treatment for autism, in plain violation of the California Mental Health Parity...

Detroit's gotten some big handouts lately from the taxpayer and President Obama is about to deliver another $1 billion with his signature on the cash-for-clunker program. The program, if extended, could well cost Americans $4 billion.

Cash-for-clunkers, which allows up to $4,500 in government vouchers for trade-ins of fuel inefficient...

Nebraska's Democratic United States Senator Ben Nelson is one of the holdouts on national health care reform, after accepting big bucks from the health insurers -- ranking #10 in the Senate for taking health insurance cash. He met his match in the Senate Commerce Committee today when a former CIGNA...

On April 14, 1994, the executives of America's seven largest tobacco companies came before Congress and each testified that tobacco was not addictive. The gaffe by the so-called seven dwarfs, which contradicted evidence in the companies' own records, became a turning point in the battle to reign in tobacco companies...

The American Medical Association has proven again that the greed of the medical insurance complex is the chief obstacle to health care reform in America.

The most established mouthpiece for American doctors weighed in against the pivotal plank of Obamacare -- a public alternative to the private health...