Latest California Healthline Stories
Oversight Commission: ‘Descriptions Incomplete’
A state oversight commission found little to no substance in reports of programmatic misconduct in its initial report released yesterday on concerns raised over compliance with Mental Health Services Act program in California.
“Basically, in the programs that were mentioned, the descriptions of those programs were incomplete,” said Jennifer Whitney, chief of communications for the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission. “And that painted a very different picture of the programs.”
Several recent news reports questioned 13 different programmatic elements that supposedly used MHSA funds for such things as yoga classes and a sweat lodge.
Tuberculosis Added to Screening List
Legislators have worked on a number of bills this session related to immunizations. On Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed one of them into law.
SB 659 by state Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Chino) requires tuberculosis screening to be included on the state’s immunization registry. That will help health officials coordinate TB immunization efforts, Negrete McLeod said, because parents now won’t need to prove immunization with their yellow-card record.
“By allowing these results to be included in the state registry,” she said, “parents will have an easier time demonstrating compliance with the requirements of local school districts.”
$4.6 Million Grant for Consumer Assistance
The Department of Managed Health Care recently received a $4.6 million federal grant to fund its consumer assistance program to help answer questions from California consumers about health coverage.
“This will enable us to reach and assist more Californians who are struggling with health coverage questions,” said Marta Green, deputy director for communications and planning at DMHC.
“The focus of the grant is on consumer assistance for Californians,” Green said, “and in particular to help seniors and people with disabilities, who have more specific needs.”
To get an idea of why health care reform is so important, said Pam Kehaly, president of Anthem Blue Cross, you have to understand how much it costs.
“The issue today is how to restrain the rising cost of health care while delivering high-quality care,” Kehaly said at a policy roundtable discussion in Sacramento yesterday. “Last year, that was a $2.7 trillion expenditure. We throw these numbers around, but it’s hard to understand the magnitude of what we’re talking about. But if you sat at your dining room table tomorrow morning and turned over dollar bills, one after the other, it would take you 92 years to reach $2.7 trillion.”
Or put another way, Kehaly said, the cost of health care is about $8,400 for every American every year. “That means, for a family of four, it’s pretty much like buying a new car every year,” Kehaly said. “The amount of the economy of France — that is, how much France and the French people spend on everything — that’s how much we spend on health care.”
California First State to Get Funding for Seniors, Disabled Program
Federal health care reform includes a state plan option to provide home- and community-based services designed to keep seniors and persons with disabilities living at and keep them out of institutional care. States taking up that option receive a 6% increase in federal matching payments.
Yesterday, California received federal approval to change its State Plan Amendment, opening the door to begin claiming Community First Choice federal funding.
The change is worth $573 million to California over two years, according to state officials.
Support Fades for Healthy Families
The Legislature never had a chance to hear arguments in favor of reinstating the Healthy Families program. The last day of the legislative session came and went on Friday with no movement on the two bills that would have reversed the planned conversion of nearly 880,000 children from Healthy Families to Medi-Cal managed care plans.
A statement from the California Children’s Health Coverage Coalition — a collection of six children’s advocacy groups in California — said lawmakers missed a chance to restore a successful program and save money for California.
“[The coalition] considers the end of session developments as a huge loss for California children, a missed opportunity to secure the $200 million in badly needed revenues from the Managed Care Organization (MCO) assessment and to delay or stop the pending transition of children from the Healthy Families Program to Medi-Cal,” the statement said.
Health-Related Bills Pass Legislature, Healthy Families in Limbo
The window to save the Healthy Families program is narrowing to a small slit, with just a single day left to pass bills.
Meanwhile, a number of other health-related bills did pass the Legislature yesterday, and are on their way to the governor’s desk.
Today — until midnight tonight — is the last day for legislation to be passed this year. The governor has until the end of September to veto or approve bills.
Time Is Short for Healthy Families Bills
If the two legislative bills to revive Healthy Families get passed by tomorrow night’s deadline, a lot of things are going to have to happen today.
The bills need to be heard in health committee, both committees would need to waive a re-hearing, the bills then must be brought to the floor and passed by both houses. And that’s assuming the bills don’t have to go through appropriations committee.
It all is expected to start today, if and when the Senate bill can be presented to the Assembly Committee on Health. The Assembly would need to waive the rules on publicly noticing meetings before the committee could hear it.
Essential Benefits, Medical Review Change Passed
The countdown has begun. Only three more voting days till the end of California’s legislative year. The Legislature’s 2012 session ends on Friday, making this a busy week.
A number of health-related bills are among the hundreds of laws passed so far and headed to the governor’s desk (some of them are pending technical concurrence in the house of origin):
One More Shot to Keep Healthy Families
Over the weekend, legislators came up with two new bills designed to keep the Healthy Families program intact. California’s version of the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program is slated for elimination. The 873,000 children in the program are scheduled to be shifted to Medi-Cal managed care plans. Almost half of them — about 415,000 children — are scheduled to begin the transition Jan. 1.
The transition timeline was too rapid for many legislators. The two new bills would halt the transition, for now.
This is the last week the Legislature can act this year. The 2012 session ends Friday.