Consumers Union Weighs in on Health Care and Financial Services
Consumers Union has received some interesting and favorable media coverage for their advocacy in the health care debate and for aggressive reporting on consumer financial services. Health-Care Reform
Headlined “Consumer Reports Chief Backs Health Reform”, NPR has a great piece on CU’s health-reform advertisement, which began airing in the Washington, DC area this week.
In addition to describing Consumers Union CEO James Guest as a “quietly influential figure,” the piece has two “outsiders” praising CU/CR for entering the fray. Here’s the best quote:
David Burda, editor of Modern Healthcare magazine, says that an organization like Consumers Union has, in this climate, an obligation to weigh in on heath care. “Everyone has a stake in the outcome of this,” Burda says. “It’s going to touch everybody, and you have to have an opinion. To not have one is an unacceptable spot to be in.”
ConsumerReportsHealth.org released a poll Monday, revealing “one half of Americans (51%) said they had faced difficult health-care choices in the past year, including putting off a doctor’s visit or medical procedure, not paying medical bills, and foregoing medications due to cost.”
The poll received wide national and local coverage. Here’s one of Jim’s 10 television interviews, and a very animated commentator on MSNBC reviewing the poll and praising our ad. At the end of the MSNBC segment (which ran the ad nationally), Newsweek’s Jon Alter joins to say: “This is huge. This is a tremendously reputable publication for many, many years.”
Financial Services
CU’s work on pointing out the pitfalls of many prepaid debit cards was the center of a front-page New York Times investigative article. Here’s the best passage:
While most major banks charge $10 or less a month for a low-balance checking account, a survey of two dozen prepaid cards released in August by the Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports, found that the cheapest, the Wal-Mart Money Card, cost $16.59 in the first month and $21.54 in the second.
By contrast, the most expensive card, the Millennium Advantage card, cost $115.05 in the first month, because of a $99 application fee, and $27.95 the second month, the survey, compiled by Michelle Jun, a lawyer for Consumers Union, showed.
And the actual fees charged can be confusing. A spokesman for the Millennium Advantage card said that while it lists the $99 fee, the company charges only up to $30. A spokesman for the Silver card said that it does not actually charge the $25 shortage fee shown in its fine print, and is working to remove it from company documents.
“How are consumers supposed to keep the fees straight if the companies can’t?” said Michael McCauley, a spokesman for Consumers Union.