KCET ‘Life & Times’ Special Focuses on Health Care in Southern California
KCET's "Life & Times" on Tuesday aired a special with three segments examining health care issues in Southern California.
The first segment profiles the Oscar Romero Clinic, a free community clinic in Los Angeles, and how patients and staff will address the loss of federal funding in June, when the $900 million extension of an 1115 Medicaid waiver expires. The segment includes comments from Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Director Thomas Garthwaite and Kazue Shibata, CEO of the Asian Pacific Health Care Venture.
The second segment examines the success of the Children's Health Initiative, a $112 million project seeking to expand health coverage to 150,000 youths in Los Angeles County (Zavala, "Life & Times," KCET, 1/4). The California Endowment, the L.A. Care Health Plan, the county Department of Health Services and other public and private organizations are collaborating on the effort, which seeks to enroll about 90,000 children in existing public health insurance programs and another 60,000 children in a new county health insurance program (California Healthline, 6/24/04). The segment includes comments from Howard Kahn, CEO of the L.A. Care Health Plan, and Richard Seidman, a physician at the Northeast Valley Health Corporation.
The final segment examines the work of Dr. Jacques Barth and Dr. Naomi Neufeld, who use an ultrasound machine called Cardio-Zone to scan children's arteries for blockages and use the ultrasound images to discuss diet and exercises changes with patients ("Life & Times," KCET, 1/4). The complete transcript is available online. The complete program is available online in RealPlayer.