Latest California Healthline Stories
Health Care Experts Debate Divergent Plans for the Uninsured
With the nation’s uninsured emerging as a “top domestic challenge” for President-elect Bush and the new Congress, four leading health care experts discussed the issue during a Monday press briefing sponsored by Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Thompson Prepares for Confirmation Hearings
To prepare for impending confirmation hearings, HHS Secretary-designee and Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) is spending two days in Washington, D.C. this week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
Medicare HMOs Net Higher Reimbursement Rates for 2001
Medicare HMOs will receive higher rates than previously planned due to recent legislation aimed at “entic[ing]” plans that have pulled out of the program to rejoin, Reuters Health reports.
Blue Cross Will Cover Services at Six Rural Sutter Hospitals
Blue Cross of California yesterday proposed a plan that would allow preferred provider organization members to continue to use six Sutter Health hospitals located in rural areas, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
Bush Administration Will Allow States ‘More Leeway’ on Health Programs
Across the gamut of domestic policy issues — including health care — state and local officials will have “far more leeway” to “shape and operate” federal programs under President-elect Bush’s administration, the New York Times reports.
Medical ‘eCooperative’ to Offer Free Web Services to Members
Nine small medical associations, including the California Academy of Family Physicians, have banded together to form the Medical Society eCooperative, which will offer free Web services to their combined 80,000 members, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Former FDA Head Urges Dismantling of Tobacco Industry
The tobacco industry “should be dismantled,” and cigarettes should be sold in “brown paper wrappers” with only a “brand name and a warning label” from a corporation established and “tightly regulated” by Congress, former FDA head Dr. David Kessler writes in a new book that chronicles the agency’s recent efforts to regulate Big Tobacco, the Washington Post reports.
HHS Issues Final Rule to Close Medicaid Loophole
As required by the Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000, HHS on Jan. 5 finalized the rule on “upper payment limits” and Medicaid funding, closing a loophole that cost the federal government nearly $2 billion in increased Medicaid costs for fiscal year 2000 alone.
Op-Ed Criticizes Invasive Insurer Questionnaires
Recounting their experience in purchasing group health insurance for the employees of Public Citizen, Alan Morrison, director of the Public Citizen Litigation Group, and Sidney Wolfe, director of the Public Citizen Health Research Group, raise concerns about medical privacy and insurer “discrimination” against companies with unhealthy employees in a Washington Post op-ed.
New State Law Enhances Protections for Disabled Workers
A new state law that intends to give California’s workers with disabilities greater protections than those afforded to them by federal law went into effect Jan. 1, the Los Angeles Times reports.