Latest California Healthline Stories
Federal Health Officials Monitor Potential for Disease Outbreaks After Hurricane Katrina
HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said during a teleconference on Tuesday that although security risks and chaotic conditions prevented federal aid from reaching New Orleans last week, federal health officials now are present in all major shelters to help local medical teams provide health care services to evacuees, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Judge Rules To Maintain Ban on CNA Strike at UC Hospitals
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Loren McMaster on Friday extended his prohibition against a planned nursing strike at University of California teaching hospitals, the Sacramento Bee reports.
Nunez Cancels Hearing on Bill To Address Drug Prices Under Workers’ Compensation Insurance System
Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles) canceled an Aug. 25 Assembly Appropriations Committee hearing and vote on a bill (SB 292) that would apply an existing price restriction on prescription drugs sold by pharmacies to workers’ compensation claimants to treatments sold by physicians, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Senate Approves Bills Addressing Food, Soda Sales in Schools
The Senate on Tuesday passed two measures that would limit the sale of snack food and soda on school grounds statewide to help address increasing childhood obesity rates, the Sacramento Bee reports.
Republican leaders in the Senate on Tuesday said that Congress should continue the fiscal year 2006 budget reconciliation process, which includes determining how to make $10 billion in cuts to Medicaid over five years, despite calls from some Democrats that Hurricane Katrina’s “impact on some of the nation’s poorest Americans should sideline any Medicaid cuts,” CQ HealthBeat reports.
Under a rule change scheduled to take effect next year, doctors in Santa Cruz and Sonoma counties could receive a 10% increase in reimbursements from CMS for treating Medicare and Medi-Cal beneficiaries while doctors in Monterey County could see a corresponding decrease in reimbursements to offset the funding shift, the Monterey County Herald reports.
FDA Indefinitely Defers Decision on Emergency Contraceptive Plan B
FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford on Aug. 26 said the agency is indefinitely deferring Barr Laboratories’ application for nonprescription sales of its emergency contraceptive Plan B and opening a 60-day public comment period on the application, sparking charges that the decision was motivated by politics rather than science, Reuters reports.
California Healthline Highlights Recent Health-Related County Action
Several county boards of supervisors last week acted on health care-related issues.
President Bush Nominates Judge John Roberts as Chief Justice of U.S. Supreme Court
President Bush on Monday nominated Judge John Roberts to be chief justice of the Supreme Court after former Chief Justice William Rehnquist — a “consistent conservative” — died from thyroid cancer on Saturday, the Boston Globe reports.
Likely Voters Favor Propositions 78 and 79, Split on 73, Field Poll Says
Voter support for both Nov. 8 statewide ballot initiatives dealing with prescription drug discounts — Propositions 78 and 79 — exceeds opposition, but neither measure currently has the majority support needed for approval, according to a Field Poll released Tuesday, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.