Latest California Healthline Stories
Future Uncertain for Adult Day Health Care Services
The verdict is in, and it looks like almost all proposed health services budget cuts have been approved by the budget subcommittees. The biggest dun came at Medi-Cal’s expense — it was cut by $1.5 billion, primarily from lowering the provider reimbursement rate for Medi-Cal by 10%, and by raising rates for patient co-payments.
The largest elements of the new budget plan also call for $1.2 billion to be axed from CalWorks, primarily by shortening the length of time people can be eligible for it, and shifting $1 billion of Prop. 10 money to Medi-Cal.
But one major piece of the health cuts remains undecided.
Physicians Are Insurance Consumers, Too
Since taking office less than two months ago, Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has made it clear he wants to protect consumers from insurers — and he made moves to get the authority to curb excessive insurance rate hikes and enforce new federal medical loss ratios.
Jones still doesn’t have the rate-regulation authority he said the California Department of Insurance needs, but he does have the enforcement power to go after insurers who don’t meet medical loss ratio standards.
Now Jones’ office is targeting a new type of insurance: medical malpractice.
Every two years, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research conducts an extensive survey — with a county-by-county breakdown of income, ethnicity and health indicators of Californians.
The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) is the nation’s largest state survey. Yesterday, the center released its 2009 data, one day after issuing its first policy brief on the data, which looked at the recent rise in how many people will be eligible for Medi-Cal and under national health care reform.
That kind of information is vital in crafting the state’s health policies, according to E. Richard Brown, director of UCLA’s CHPR.
About 3 Million New Medi-Cal Enrollees?
The number of Californians who will be eligible to participate in the federal health care coverage expansion in 2014 is higher than previously thought, according to a new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, based on data from the 2009 California Health Interview Survey.
About 4.7 million people will be eligible for the new coverage options, and about 3 million of those people qualify for Medi-Cal, according to Shana Alex Lavarreda, lead author of the UCLA policy brief.
“We were surprised by the number of people eligible for Medi-Cal, about 3 million, under the federal expansion,” Lavarreda said.
Open Enrollment Window Closing
It’s open enrollment season and this year that means a little more in California.
Several state officials and health advocates gathered at UC-Davis Medical Center in Sacramento yesterday, to make sure parents understand there are some new rules about health care for children.
New federal and state legislation means that children with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied coverage, nor billed at excessive rates. And right now is the time to sign up children for coverage, according to Assembly member Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles.
Final Push To Alter Health Budget Cuts
Throughout the last three weeks of budget subcommittee hearings, legislators have continually asked for input, advice, suggestions for any options other than the budgetary carnage they are considering.
Now, one program on the chopping block has an alternative.
The California Association for Adult Day Services has developed a restructuring plan that could lop 17% off the budget for adult day health services, a program that is facing elimination with the pending budget proposal.
Tears, Fear in Response to Disabled Cuts
Lindsay is a girl with cerebral palsy from Yuba City. Everything in her life has been a struggle, she said — from learning how to read to learning how to behave. But she did it. Made it through school, and now she has a job. But at yesterday’s budget subcommittee hearing, she testified that all of her successes will disappear if the planned budget cuts go through to disabled programs in California.
“If you pass these budget cuts, I will be institutionalized,” she said in her strong, halting voice. “I have only been able to succeed because my mom always fought for me. And if she were still alive, she would have been here in these hallways at 7 a.m., to fight for me.”
As it was, there were hundreds of people crammed into the hallway outside the hearing room, and the line to testify before the Senate subcommittee was impossibly long.
Maternity Mandate Bill Has Familiar Ring to It
According to the California Health Benefits Review Program, nine health-related mandate bills have been introduced as new legislation in this legislative session. They are undergoing analysis before they’re heard in committee.
Some of that analysis is going to be a bit repetitive. Many of those bills have already been heard, and some of them were passed in the Legislature last year.
For instance, SB 155 by Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), which would mandate coverage of maternity care, has pretty much identical language and intent to last session’s AB 1825. That bill, which had been authored by former Assembly member Hector De La Torre, D-South Gate, was passed by the Legislature, and then vetoed by former Governor Schwarzenegger.
Health Services Making Shift to Counties
Compared to the past two weeks of painful deliberations in budget subcommittee hearings, yesterday’s discussion of the proposed shift of health services to the counties was like a breath of realigned air.
“In a normal year, we wouldn’t contemplate a hundred percent takeover [of some health services] in counties,” Kelly Brooks of the California State Association of Counties said. “But this isn’t a normal year, so we’re willing to consider taking on probably more than we would.”
Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal shifts responsibility and funding to the counties for foster care, adult protective services, mental health programs and drug and alcohol treatment programs..
How CalWORKS Cuts Hit Beneficiaries
The litanies of budget cuts have droned on throughout the past two weeks of subcommittee hearings. In a recent hearing over a proposed $1.5 billion in cuts to CalWORKS, the state’s welfare-to-work program, things got a little more real.
It started with a finance department statistic that nine other states have imposed similar restrictions to the newly proposed 48-month time limit for benefits to adults and their children on CalWORKS. (That limit would end cash aid to about 5,500 families in California, and move up the clock for hundreds of thousands of others.)
“Well, other states spend less than us on education, too,” Assembly member Wesley Chesbro (D-Santa Rosa) said. “That’s not necessarily a model we want to strive for.”