Latest California Healthline Stories
HIV Prevention ‘Even More Important’ Than Refining California AIDS Specialist Law, Mercury News Says
Although clarification of a California law that gave HIV/AIDS patients the right to be treated by a physician specializing in the field is “important,” preventing new HIV infections is “even more important,” a San Jose Mercury News editorial says.
House Republicans plan to propose legislation to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare that would cost about 60% more than the plan President Bush included in his fiscal year 2003 budget proposal, the AP/Las Vegas Sun reports.
Senate Special Committee on Aging Hears ‘Emotional Testimony’ on Nursing Home Abuse
The Senate Special Committee on Aging yesterday heard “emotional testimony” about “nightmarish cases” of nursing home abuse as the General Accounting Office released a report finding that such cases are reported only sporadically and rarely prosecuted, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
As states scale back or impose limits on their CHIP programs, many children will become uninsured and unable to receive proper preventive care, thus raising the potential that they will face greater health problems as adults, Neal Halfon, director of the University of California-Los Angeles Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, and Peter Long, a UCLA doctoral candidate, write in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece.
The Ventura County Board of Supervisors today will likely approve a plan to provide seven hospitals in the county with up to $90,000 each in funds from the county’s share of the 1998 national tobacco settlement to help cover the cost of state-mandated seismic upgrades, the Los Angeles Times reports.
HHS Inspector General Report Finds Oversight ‘Lacking’ in Ambulatory Surgery Centers
Oversight in ambulatory surgery centers that serve Medicare patients is “lacking,” and information about the quality of such centers is “woefully inadequate,” the HHS Office of Inspector General states in a three-part report.
Los Angeles Led 43 Metropolitan Areas in Drug Abuse-Related Deaths in 2000, SAMHSA Study Finds
Los Angeles reported 1,192 drug abuse-related deaths in 2000, the largest number among 43 U.S. metropolitan areas, according to new study released last Friday by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
Nursing Home Abuse Not Reported in ‘Timely Manner,’ Often Not Prosecuted, GAO Report Finds
Physical and sexual abuse of nursing home residents is “frequently not reported in a timely manner,” and “few allegations of abuse are ultimately prosecuted,” an 18-month investigation by the General Accounting Office has found.
Bee Opposes Bill Allowing Doctors and Medical Groups to Bargain Collectively with Health Plans
California lawmakers should not pass AB 1600 because it would “make a court case out of a run-of-the-mill money dispute between a health plan and a doctor,” the Sacramento Bee writes in an editorial.
Two large national purchasing groups — private groups that serve as “middlemen” for about half the nation’s not-for-profit hospitals — negotiated contracts last year for about $34 billion in medical supplies, but many health care professionals question whether quality care is being “compromised” by financial ties that the groups have to medical supply companies, the New York Times reports.