Latest California Healthline Stories
Montana’s ‘Pain Refugees’ Travel To California To Get Prescribed Opioids
With rising awareness of opioid abuse, some pain patients say doctors are less likely to prescribe them. One Montana sufferer goes to great lengths to get his prescription — he flies to California.
California Regulators’ Split View of Health Insurance Mergers
California’s insurance commissioner, Dave Jones, and the Department of Managed Health Care’s Shelley Rouillard have opposing views of at least one major insurance company merger proposal. California Healthline’s Chad Terhune recently discussed the state’s merger landscape on Connecticut Public Radio station WNPR.
State Program For HIV/AIDS Patients Faces Serious Funding Problem, Advocates Say
Agencies that provide caregiving services for the Medi-Cal program say underfunding has thinned out their ranks, making it difficult to provide care to everyone who needs and qualifies for it.
For Parents Of Preemies, Life Starts With A Complex Fight For Survival
About 380,000 babies are born too soon every year in the United States, a preterm birth rate that’s far higher than most high-income, developed countries. Even with so many families facing the realities of a premature child, predicting the long-term health of a baby is difficult, and doctors have an even tougher time talking about those predictions with parents.
Health Reform Roils Downton Abbey
This season, Downton Abbey has a new plot line that has health wonks on the edge of their seats: a heated debate about hospital consolidation that closely parallels what’s going on in the U.S. health care system today. Jenny Gold filed this story for Marketplace.
Debating The New Ballot Measure To Control Prescription Drug Prices
The California Drug Price Relief Act would mandate that the state pay no more for prescription drugs than the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. David Gorn sat down with Rand Martin, Sacramento lobbyist for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which is sponsoring the ballot measure, and Kathy Fairbanks, campaign consultant for the committee opposing it.
Changing Disparities in Breast-Feeding
Jan Emerson-Shea of the California Hospital Association, Robbie Gonzalez-Dow of the California Breastfeeding Coalition, lactation consultant Monique Sims-Harper and neonatologist Nancy Wight spoke with California Healthline about the disparities associated with breastfeeding, the cultural factors that contribute to those disparities and the possible influence hospitals could have on reducing them.
Fight Continues To Raise Smoking Age
Bill Dombrowski of the California Retailers Association, State Sen. Ed Hernandez, Debra Kelley of the American Lung Association and Assembly member Jim Wood spoke with California Healthline about the return of proposed legislation to raise the legal smoking age from 18 to 21 in California.
California and its Counties Leading Way on Health Benefits for Undocumented
Contra Costa County Supervisor Candice Anderson, Rosa Maria Arriaga, a 72-year-old patient, Álvaro Fuentes of Contra Costa County’s Community Clinic Consortium, Gerald Kominski of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, Gabrielle Lessard of the National Immigration Law Center, Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, Teshina Wilson, a physician at a Richmond clinic, and Anthony Wright of Health Access California spoke with California Healthline about the state’s efforts to provide health care to undocumented immigrants.
State Takes Steps To Curb Overmedication of Foster Children — Is It Enough?
Former foster child Shanequa Arrington, state Sen. Jim Beall, public health nurse Susan Bullard, Bill Grimm and Anna Johnson of the National Center for Youth Law, Cathy Senderling-McDonald of the California Welfare Directors Association and Mike Wofford of the state Department of Health Care Services spoke with California Healthline about the possible over-prescribing of psychotropic and antipsychotic medication for foster children in California.