- California Healthline Original Stories 2
- Covered California Tells Insurers To Plan For The Worst
- As Government-Funded Cancer Research Sags, Scientists Fear U.S. Is ‘Losing Its Edge’
- Sacramento Watch 2
- Single-Payer Marches Forward In California, But Sky-High Price Tag Threatens To Trip It Up
- More Than 500 Californians Have Sought Help Under Aid-In-Dying Law
- Public Health and Education 3
- Emotional Scars Still Haunt Firefighters Months After Deadly Blaze
- Local Surgeons Adopt Technique To Prevent Strokes By Reversing Blood Flow
- Public Health Experts Dismayed At Trump's 'Reckless' Decision To Pull Out Of Paris Accord
Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Covered California Tells Insurers To Plan For The Worst
The state health insurance exchange has instructed its participating health plans to submit alternative proposals for premium hikes that would offset the potential loss of an important source of federal funding. (Emily Bazar, )
As Government-Funded Cancer Research Sags, Scientists Fear U.S. Is ‘Losing Its Edge’
More of the research studies being presented at the world’s largest annual gathering of cancer scientists comes from abroad. (Liz Szabo, )
More News From Across The State
Single-Payer Marches Forward In California, But Sky-High Price Tag Threatens To Trip It Up
The proposal passed the state Senate and now heads to the Assembly, but with few details on how to foot the $400-billion-a-year cost for the plan, the prospects don't look too sunny.
Los Angeles Times:
Single-Payer Healthcare Plan Advances In California Senate — Without A Way To Pay Its $400-Billion Tab
A proposal to adopt a single-payer healthcare system for California took an initial step forward Thursday when the state Senate approved a bare-bones bill that lacks a method for paying the $400-billion cost of the plan. The proposal was made by legislators led by Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) at the same time President Trump and Republican members of Congress are working to repeal and replace the federal Affordable Care Act. (McGreevy, 6/1)
The Associated Press:
California Senate Backs Longshot Single-Payer Care Bill
The move came even as proponents acknowledged they don't know how to pay its huge $400 billion price tag. The measure would have died if it failed to clear the Senate this week. Democrats said they wanted to keep it alive as the Assembly tries to work out a massive overhaul of the state health care system. "With President Trump's promise to abandon the Affordable Care Act as we know it, it leaves millions without access to care and California is once again tasked to lead," said Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Democrat from Bell Gardens who wrote the single-payer bill with Sen. Toni Atkins, a San Diego Democrat. (Cooper, 6/1)
The Sacramento Bee:
Government-Run Universal Health Care Wins Vote In California Senate
Under the plan, government would negotiate prices with doctors, hospitals and other providers, acting as the “single payer” for everyone’s health care in the place of insurance companies. All Californians would receive coverage regardless of immigration status or ability to pay. (Luna, 6/1)
The Mercury News:
California Senate Passes Single-Payer Health Care Plan
The California Nurses Association, the bill’s lead sponsor, has pushed the proposal hard, organizing demonstrations at the California Democratic Convention last month and promising to “primary” incumbent Democrats who don’t jump on board. On Wednesday, a study commissioned by the nurses concluded that Californians could save tens of billions of dollars annually under such a system through lowering of drug prices and elimination of administrative overhead. (Murphy, 6/2)
More Than 500 Californians Have Sought Help Under Aid-In-Dying Law
Kat West, the national director of policy and programs at Compassion & Choices, explains what California has learned in the year since the law passed.
Capital Public Radio/KXJZ:
End Of Life Report: Looking Back A Year After Aid In Dying Law's Enactment
This June marks the one-year anniversary since California passed its aid in dying law. A new report finds more than 500 Californians have gotten access to the medication and nearly 500 facilities across the state have offered resources to those interested in the care. Kat West is the National Director of Policy & Programs at Compassion & Choices, the organization behind the report. (Ruyak, 6/1)
Emotional Scars Still Haunt Firefighters Months After Deadly Blaze
But they say they are reluctant to seek mental health help.
Stat:
After A Horrific Blaze, Oakland Firefighters Confront Lasting Emotional Scars
Many Oakland firefighters told STAT they are still struggling with the emotional fallout from that night six months ago. But few have sought mental health treatment, because of stigma within the department, combined with a limit on free counseling sessions provided by the city. Now the Ghost Ship fire has become a catalyst for change in the Oakland Fire Department, where Robertson, a 54-year-old lieutenant and the president of the Oakland firefighters union, and other firefighters are pushing to create a peer counseling program. Firefighters in general are at high risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, which can lead to anxiety, substance abuse, and even suicide, and that has spurred firefighters in numerous cities to demand that their mental health be treated as urgently as any other injury sustained on the job. (Rosenbaum, 6/2)
Local Surgeons Adopt Technique To Prevent Strokes By Reversing Blood Flow
The process keeps plaque from getting knocked loose and traveling to the brain.
The San Diego Union-Tribune:
New Technique Prevents Strokes By Reversing Blood Flow Through Brain
Oxygen-rich blood generally flows from the heart to the brain, but a new technology aimed at preventing strokes temporarily reverses that path. Surgeons at Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa are the first in this region, and among a growing number nationwide, to use the system to channel blood from the brain through a special external filter and then injecting it back into the body via a vein in the leg. The point of this unusual rerouting is to keep bits of plaque in a clogged carotid artery — plaque can be knocked loose during insertion of a stent — from traveling to the brain, where they can cause strokes. (Sisson, 6/2)
In other public health news —
Capital Public Radio/KXJZ:
Yolo County Officials Fight To Slow Down Norovirus Outbreak
An outbreak of norovirus in Yolo County and school closures from its contagious nature has prompted health officials to slow its spreading.Kristin Weivoda, EMS administrator for Yolo County Health and Human Services, joins us talk about what she's doing to educate the public on preventative methods. (Ruyak, 6/1)
Public Health Experts Dismayed At Trump's 'Reckless' Decision To Pull Out Of Paris Accord
A warmer planet will bring more air pollution, fuel the spread of infectious diseases and increase the incidence of certain cancers, among many other things, they warn. “Climate change is perhaps the most important public health issue of our time," said Mary Pittman, the president and CEO of the Public Health Institute.
Los Angeles Times:
Health Experts Are Furious With Trump For Pulling Out Of The Paris Climate Agreement
Environmentalists aren’t the only ones outraged over President Trump’s decision to have the U.S. walk away from the Paris accord on global warming. Health experts are pretty dismayed as well. The climate agreement, reached in Paris in 2015 after years of negotiation, aims to keep Earth’s temperature within 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of pre-industrial levels. Meeting that goal would have required the U.S. to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gasses — moves that Trump said would wipe out the jobs of millions of Americans. (Many economists disagree.) (Kaplan, 6/1)
Republican Senator: 'I Don’t See A Comprehensive Health Care Plan This Year'
Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.) paints a pessimistic picture of the upper chamber's chances of moving forward on health care when members get back from recess. Meanwhile, some lawmakers mull over taxing employer-sponsored health plans, but that idea would meet fierce resistance from companies. And past promises to lower premiums may come back haunt senators.
The Wall Street Journal:
Republican Senator Says Deal On Health Care Unlikely This Year
Sen. Richard Burr (R., N.C.) said that the Senate probably won’t reach a deal to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act when it returns from a recess next week, in a stark assessment of the party’s health-care prospects. “It’s unlikely that we will get a health-care deal,” Mr. Burr told WXII 12 News, a North Carolina news station, on Thursday. He said that the House-passed GOP health plan was “dead on arrival,” and that “I don’t see a comprehensive health-care plan this year.” (Hughes, 6/2)
The Wall Street Journal:
GOP Senators Weigh Taxing Employer-Health Plans
Senate Republicans set on reworking the Affordable Care Act are considering taxing employer-sponsored health insurance plans, a move that would meet stiff resistance from companies and potentially raise taxes on millions of people who get coverage on the job. The move could raise billions in revenue that could be used to help stabilize the fragile individual insurance market. But it could be politically risky, since it could expand the impact of GOP health proposals from Medicaid recipients and those who buy insurance on their own to the roughly 177 million people who get coverage through their employers. (Armour and Peterson, 6/1)
Politico Pro:
GOP Could Be Haunted By Pledge To Lower Health Premiums
Senate Republicans may be all over the map on an Obamacare repeal plan, but on one fundamental point — reducing insurance premiums — they are in danger of overpromising and under-delivering. The reality is they have only a few ways to reduce Americans’ premiums: Offer consumers bigger subsidies. Allow insurers to offer skimpier coverage. Or permit insurers to charge more — usually much more — to those with pre-existing illnesses and who are older and tend to rack up the biggest bills. (Haberkorn, 6/1)
In news related to Medicaid expansion —
The Wall Street Journal:
How Proposed Spending Caps To Medicaid Are Calculated
In his first full budget proposal, President Donald Trump advocates changing the way the federal government funds Medicaid. The fiscal 2018 budget, released last week, was short on details but endorses a bill passed last month by the U.S. House of Representatives that would restrict Medicaid spending for the first time since the program started in 1965. Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that provides health insurance for 77 million poor and low-income people. It cost the federal government $368 billion last year, or about 9% of the national budget. Based on spending, it is the third largest domestic program behind Social Security and Medicare. (McGinty, 6/2)
Huffington Post:
The Fate Of 16.8 Million Medicaid Enrollees Rests On 20 GOP Senators From 14 States
Whatever happens next with Obamacare repeal and the future of Medicaid will depend in large measure on whether GOP senators choose to fight for the combined 16.8 million of their constituents on Medicaid, including 4.3 million who gained Medicaid coverage because of the Affordable Care Act, according to data from state agencies compiled by HuffPost. ... More than 30 percent of those living in Sen. John Kennedy’s Louisiana, Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton’s Arkansas, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul’s Kentucky are Medicaid beneficiaries. More than one-fifth of those living in eight of the other states with Republicans senators are enrolled in Medicaid. (Young and Scheller, 6/2)
Price, Who Owned Drug Stocks, Allegedly Pushed Australians On Policies To Benefit Drugmakers
A congressional aide tells ProPublica that HHS Secretary Tom Price, while still in Congress in 2016 and visiting Australia, put pressure on officials there to change their position so that drugmakers could keep their data protected for 12 years instead of five.
ProPublica:
Tom Price Bought Drug Stocks. Then He Pushed Pharma’s Agenda In Australia.
In the spring before the 2016 presidential election, the Obama administration’s 12-nation trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, was still alive. ... The Australian government was getting in the way of one change demanded by U.S. pharmaceutical companies. Makers of cutting-edge biological drugs wanted to have data from their clinical trials protected from competitors for 12 years, as they are under U.S. law — not the roughly five years permitted under the TPP. ... In Canberra, Price and another Republican, Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, pressured senior Australian trade officials to modify their position on the 12-year extension, according to a congressional aide who was on the trip. ... Price’s lobbying abroad, which has not previously been reported, is another example of how his work in Congress could have benefitted his investment portfolio. He traded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in health-related companies while taking action on legislation and regulations affecting the industry. (Faturechi, 6/1)
Viewpoints: Don't Bet Against Single-Payer Just Yet
A selection of opinions on health care developments from around the state.
Los Angeles Times:
The Challenges In Setting Up A California Single-Payer System Are Daunting — But Not Insurmountable
Single-payer almost certainly would be cheaper and simpler than the ridiculous contraption we have now, a mishmash of employer, government and private plans all with different rules and standards. It’s favored by a clear majority of Americans in opinion polls, at least in theory, and it’s a linchpin of popular political movements like Sen. Bernie Sanders’. (Michael Hiltzik, 5/26)
Sacramento Bee:
Californians Like Universal Care, Unless They’re Taxed
A new poll indicates that most Californians support changing the state’s immense, insurance-based medical care system to one in which the state provides universal coverage. However, there’s just one small detail: 65 percent support drops to 42 percent if a “single-payer” system requires new taxes, which, of course, it would. (Dan Walters, 6/2)
Orange County Register:
Single-Payer Health Care Plan Would Require Massive Tax Increase
The latest stop on progressives’ magical wish tour for a single-payer health care plan is California, where U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, has been campaigning on behalf of a proposed state-run, single-payer system. This week, state lawmakers in Sacramento got their first look at the price tag for the proposal: $400 billion annually. At that price, even after accounting for an estimated $200 billion that could be saved by replacing current state-run health programs with the single-payer program, Californians would still need to come up with another $200 billion annually to fund the system. (Eric Boehm, 5/28)
The Press Democrat:
State Can’t Afford To Go Its Own Way On Health Care
As campaign promises to improve the Affordable Care Act give way to a stubborn determination to kill Obamacare at any cost, California elected officials should be looking for ways to ensure that their constituents don’t lose their health insurance. But the single-payer health plan now pending in Sacramento isn’t the correct response. The appeal of state Sen. Ricardo Lara’s proposal is obvious: universal coverage with little, if any, out-of-pocket expense for consumers. But the price tag would be staggering. A legislative committee report — released this week in advance of key votes on Lara’s Senate Bill 568 — pegged the cost of a state-run single-payer system at $400 billion a year. To put that figure in perspective, the state’s budget is about $185 billion a year. (5/27)
Los Angeles Times:
'Everyone I Know Is Worried.' Terrified Patients Await Fate Of Their Healthcare
In the early days, [Dr. Juan Z. Montes] said, most of his patients had private insurance coverage through their employers — many of them airport-related companies. Now, the bulk of his clients are on Medi-Cal or covered by a combination of Medi-Cal and Medicare. If the healthcare reform bill backed by President Trump and approved by the House were to become law, a lot of these people could get hammered. (Steve Lopez, 5/28)
Sacramento Bee:
As Californians Lose Their Health Insurance, Republicans Should Be Held Responsible
Twenty-three million people will lose health insurance coverage. Isn’t that enough to stop us all in our tracks and ask exactly what are we doing? ... As someone who has worked in health care for over 20 years, who has seen the amazing achievements under the Affordable Care Act, and heard the stories directly from the people whose lives are significantly better, I stand aghast at what our country is doing. And worse, what the Republicans in my own state voted for. (Carmela Castellano-Garcia, 5/28)
Los Angeles Times:
Trump's Rollback Of Birth Control Rights Will Run Into A Legal Buzzsaw
The Trump administration’s long-telegraphed attack on women’s contraceptive rights acquired tangible form Wednesday with the leak to Vox of the text of the proposed rule change. As expected, the Department of Health and Human Services, along with the departments of Labor and the Treasury, are planning to expand exemptions to the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive care mandate so they apply to any employers expressing “religious beliefs and moral convictions” against birth control. The rule essentially would allow any employer to drop birth control coverage in employee health plans virtually at whim. (Michael Hiltzik, 6/1)
Sacramento Bee:
Why Not Find Out If Pot Can Help Veterans With PTSD?
There are two signature wounds from our most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – traumatic brain injury, often from IEDs blowing up Humvees, and post-traumatic stress disorder, worsened by repeated deployments into combat. On this Memorial Day, our elected officials and policymakers should renew their pledge to take care of troops when they come home. Part of that is investigating all treatments – including moving past the ridiculous and severe restrictions on federal research into marijuana. (5/26)
Los Angeles Times:
We're In An Opioid Epidemic That's Killing People. Why Does A State Senator Want To Make It Harder To Catch Bad Doctors?
Opioid pill mills, trading in dangerous narcotics like oxycodone, have been shut down in Southern California and beyond, but investigators say there’s more work to be done. ... As the law stands now, officers who investigate tips about doctors who write questionable prescriptions can check a monitoring database maintained by the California Department of Justice. ... But under Senate Bill 641, by Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), law enforcement officials would need to get a search warrant before using CURES to check on a doctor. (Steve Lopez, 5/31)
Los Angeles Times:
O.C. Supervisors' Decision To Expand Detention Program Overlooks Jail Conditions
The Orange County Board of Supervisors has voted to expand immigration detention at the Theo Lacy Facility by 120 people. This comes just two months after the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security released a report on alarming conditions at Theo Lacy, which include “24-hour solitary,” “serious safety concerns,” “horrific conditions” and “spoiled food and moldy showers." (Jan Meslin and Tina Shull, 5/30)
Los Angeles Times:
Plastic Pollution Doesn’t Just Make For An Ugly Beach Day. It’s Contaminating Our Food Chain
A single discarded piece of plastic breaks down into millions — and these bits are mistaken for food and ingested by even the smallest organisms on the oceanic food chain. Contaminated zooplankton feed on phytoplankton, which are fed on by small fish, who are fed on by squid — and so it goes on up to our dinner plates. (Julie Andersen, 5/29)