Yearly Archives: 2007

George Halvorson 5, Lehna Brewer minus 18 months

[kaiserthrive.org’s editor’s note: We love birthday parties — especially our own — but even so we were taught to be humble on these occasions, and that it would be less than polite to toot our own horn. Not so George Halvorson, who appears to revel in insulting Kaiser Permanente victims by refusing to address their… Read More »

An open letter to George Halvorson

[…] After six years of investigating and documenting the heinous medical crime committed against her by a Kaiser surgeon ? and related Medicare fraud ? Kaiser victim Jupirena Stein is challenging George Halvorson to put his money where his mouth is. For the last few months George has been squawking to anyone who will listen about fake health care reform, but the one question he pointedly refuses to answer is the one most relevant to Kaiser members and its victims, past and future: How dare you hold yourself up as an expert in health health care reform when you can?t even reform your own murdering organization? Please George, tell us, we would really like to know. […]

Fourth season of Brand Baloney on a $45 million Kaiser roll

[kaiserthrive.org editor’s note: Yeah, everyone is ‘Thrive’-ing at Kaiser Permanente…unless you need a kidney transplant, or have pneumonia, or cancer, or a past due pregnancy, or a consumer complaint, or need a prescription, or, or, or… Thrive has been so “successful” that nationally Kaiser membership has remained mostly flat since the campaign began, and the… Read More »

Non-profit in name only

[kaiserthrive.org editor’s note: Our apologies for not posting this sooner, but due to recent personal obligations it has been difficult to update as often as we would like to. Unfortunately I also don’t have much time tonight for commentary, although this article and Kaiser’s news release certainly scream out for more than a little of… Read More »

Kaiser Doctor Accused Of Speeding Organ Donor Death

Originally published by KTVU.com and no longer available online. LOS ANGELES — A surgeon with close ties to the Bay Area was charged Monday with prescribing excessive drugs to a comatose, disabled patient to hasten his death and harvest his organs for transplantation. It’s the first such criminal case against a transplant doctor in the… Read More »

DMHC levies $3 million fine against Kaiser for poor handling of member complaints

[kaiserthrive.org’s editor’s note: Is this vindication for Kaiser critics, who have been making these claims for years only to be erroneously discredited, abused and marginalized by Kaiser management and its less than ethical PR and legal departments? Feels a little like vindication, but in our experience these people seem to regret their horrendous actions quite a bit less than they do being caught.

We received an email from a Kaiser employee a few days ago, asking us if we would be willing to post some tangible steps that Kaiser could take to improve itself, as well as a score card listing some of these steps and how Kaiser is doing with implementing them. Kaiser makes a point of pretending it doesn’t respond to anything we do, even though we know for a fact that isn’t true, but in the spirit of supporting what is best for Kaiser members, we are more than willing to report on positive steps in the right direction. We’re still hoping to find even one Kaiser member or employee who has been treated fairly in a dispute, and as soon as that happens it will be our pleasure to report it here.]

From the L.A. Times:

State fines Kaiser again — The HMO’s second such penalty in a year targets its handling of patient complaints at nine hospitals. […]