Latest California Healthline Stories
Survey: Californians Concur on Need for Prevention
At a joint Assembly and Senate health hearing yesterday, results of a Field Poll unveiled a few days shy of the official release indicate that an overwhelming majority of Californians (about 80% of those surveyed) believe government and schools need to pitch in to fight childhood obesity and that preventive health programs pay for themselves in reduced health care costs to the state.
That tied in nicely with the intent of the hearing, which was convened by the two legislative health committees to look at ways to focus health policy toward prevention of chronic conditions such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
“When we look at the fact that individual [health] behavior and people’s environment contribute to about 70% of our health care costs, it should really be addressed,” according to Larry Cohen, founder and executive director of the Prevention Institute and a panelist at the hearing. “But our health care investment is only about 4% in prevention.”
Central Valley Residency May Stay Open
Paul Hensler, CEO of Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield, said yesterday he plans to keep the family practice residency program intact.
Two weeks ago, the hospital announced it was closing that residency program to the incoming class of six residents, though the program itself would continue. Yesterday, Hensler said he and community members have been working hard to come up with a solution to keep the program.
“There are two scenarios,” Hensler said, “to either make the [Family Practice] department more cost-effective, or to develop a collaborative program with the community here.”
Welfare to Work Seen As Health Issue
Phil Ansell, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Social Services, has watched funding for the CalWORKs program diminish over recent years. At an Assembly hearing late last week, Ansell held both hands apart, as if measuring a decent-sized fish in the air.
“If this balloon is our welfare-to-work program,” he said, then moved his hands closer together, “we have managed to shrink it without tearing it.”
If the governor’s recently proposed cuts to CalWORKs go through, though, Ansell said it’s likely that balloon will pop.
Organizing the Mental Health of California
Assembly member Wesley Chesbro (D-Arcata) is nothing if not optimistic.
But at last week’s Assembly hearing on mental health issues, even he was having a little trouble trying to make lemonade of the budget cuts to mental health services.
“We have gotten to the point where we’re cutting things that were originally designed to save costs,” Chesbro said of one particular mental health-related program, the caregiver resource centers.
“At this point,” Chesbro said, “we’re like the farmer eating his seed corn.”
Study Looks at Language Barriers to Exchange Coverage
Communities of color are expected to make up a large portion of the California Health Benefit Exchange population. Many potential enrollees have limited English skills, which could get in the way of obtaining coverage.
That’s according to a report due to be released today as a joint project of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network and the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.
“We estimate that about 2.65 million nonelderly adults will be eligible for the exchange. Of that 2.65 million, about 67% of them are people of color,” UCLA researcher Daphna Gans said. “That’s mostly Latino, followed by African American, then Asian.”
Dental Problems Showing Up as Emergencies
A study being released today by the Pew Foundation found that 83,000 emergency department visits in California in 2007 were due to preventable dental problems. That rate of dental emergencies is likely growing quickly, according to Shelly Gehshan, director of the national Pew Children’s Dental Campaign.
“It is the wrong service, in the wrong setting, at the wrong time,” Gehshan said.
“These are people who come in with dental pain, and they’re desperate. The emergency room can’t cure that, so they don’t really get the problem taken care of.”
Exemption Granted for Pediatric Day Health
For months, Terry Racciato has been trying to get the state to reverse its imposition of a 10% Medi-Cal provider rate cut on the 14 pediatric day health care centers in California.
Racciato, who runs two PDHC centers in the San Diego area, has been arguing with the Department of Health Care Services that pediatric day health care services should be exempted from that 10% rate cut, as home health agencies were.
On Friday, the state agreed.
Hearing Examines States’ Behavioral Health Restructuring
The state has big plans for restructuring the behavioral health system in California. State legislators held a rare four-committee joint hearing this week to hear about the details of that reorganization, and to raise concerns about it.
“We understand the need to streamline and cut costs,” Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) said, “but at what cost?”
Assembly member Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) said California’s consumers must be at the center of all discussion about changing health care policies and programs.
“I think it is critical to pause, as a body,” Mitchell said, “to make sure consumers aren’t harmed by this streamlining of our departments.”
From Supreme Court to Appeals Court
Yesterday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court had a ripple effect in California, influencing a number of lawsuits in the state over health care cuts.
Four lawsuits have been filed over the 10% Medi-Cal provider rate cuts, and in all four cases, a federal judge has issued a temporary injunction blocking those cuts. In another court case, an injunction halted 20% trigger cuts to Californians receiving In-Home Supportive Services.
All of those cases were waiting to see what the Supreme Court would decide in Douglas v. Independent Living Center of Southern California. Yesterday’s decision to send that case back to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was a huge victory for patient rights’ groups, according to Melinda Bird, a Disability Rights California attorney.
Working Out the Details of the Exchange
James Robinson can sum up the ultimate ideal and goal of the health benefit exchange in California:
“We want to cover all services, for everyone, without prior authorization,” he said. “And without having to pay for it.”
Robinson, director of the UC Berkeley Center for Health Technology, was part of a panel discussion at yesterday’s California Health Benefit Exchange board meeting. Health experts chimed in on a series of panel discussions designed to help the board make sense of the complexity of the new exchange.