Latest California Healthline Stories
Three new maternity coverage laws were passed this year in California, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the people who need that coverage will get it, according to experts who gathered at a recent meeting in the Capitol Building.
“Just passing a new law we found isn’t enough,” according to Jenya Cassidy of the California Work and Family Coalition, which co-sponsored the event. “It’s also really important that you need to empower people to use the rights they have.”
According to Cassidy, many women of reproductive age who qualify for services and protections under California law aren’t aware of them.
How Can California Make Most of Volatile Marketplace?
We asked experts and policymakers how the state can best take advantage of competition and consolidation in the health care industry to ensure that the entire system — and ultimately California consumers — benefit.
California Hospitals Ask Courts To Halt Cuts
Some California hospitals would take a significant and long-lasting hit from Medi-Cal reimbursement cuts recently approved by CMS, according to the California Hospital Association, which this week filed a petition in federal court to put a temporary halt to those reductions.
CHA’s lawsuit and injunction request are separate from the court action taken earlier this week by the California Medical Association and other provider organizations.
“They’re two entirely different lawsuits,” Jan Emerson-Shea of CHA said. “We have filed a declaration with the court, asking the court to stop certain cuts that were approved by the CMS and were retroactive to June 1. It’s all related to the same set of cuts, but we’re suing based on the hospital cuts.”
Dueling Polls Offer Alternative Reform Opinions
Two polls released last week offered conflicting views of public opinion on health care reform. Coming in the same week the Supreme Court announced it would hear reform arguments, the polls also raise a couple of questions: How much influence does public opinion have on the Supreme Court? And vice versa?
Design Element the First Step Toward No-Wrong-Door
California took an important first step toward implementation of the Health Benefit Exchange last week when it unveiled the initial design for enrolling Californians and determining their eligibility in 2014.
The initial design of the project, called Enroll UX 2014 (UX stands for “user experience”), was presented to the Health Benefit Exchange board by project director Terri Shaw.
“We have teams from 11 states participating in the process,” Shaw said. “The objectives are two-fold — to develop a first-class user experience, and to ensure retention of consumers.”
PCIP Enrollment Could Be Capped in Two Months
State officials may need to curtail enrollment in the federally funded Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan in as little as two months from now, if more federal dollars aren’t allocated to it.
That was the word last week from the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, which oversees the federal PCIP program. It was surprising news, given its history since the program launched last year.
Every month, at every board meeting, the report was always the same — that the flow of enrollees into the program was increasing, but at a surprisingly slow rate.
Settlement Sets New Course for Adult Day Health Care
The settlement of a lawsuit over adult day health care essentially reinstitutes many benefits for some of the state’s most vulnerable residents in a new program, but many of the details — such as who will be eligible and how many centers will remain open — have yet to be worked out.
Lawsuit Settlement Ends Fight Over ADHC
Really, it’s all about Esther Darling.
The 74-year-old is the poster child for adult day health care services. She had a stroke, deals with diabetes and congestive heart failure, takes multiple medications and receives care and treatment at a day center in Yolo County.
“If it wasn’t for the [ADHC] therapy, I wouldn’t be able to walk today,” Darling said. “They said I wouldn’t walk anymore, but I was determined to prove them wrong.”
Rural Critical Care Access Hospitals Could Get Hit
Health care services across the country are expecting to be slammed if the congressional debt-reduction super committee makes its deadline and submits a plan to reduce the federal deficit by Wednesday, but rural California could take a particularly big hit, according to a Washington, D.C., policy expert who spoke in Sacramento yesterday.
In addition to Medicare reimbursement rate cuts, other reduction proposals have included eliminating all rural hospital payment programs, according to David Lee, a governmental affairs expert for the National Rural Health Association.
“There are a number of possible cuts that directly affect rural health care, but this one — that all rural hospital payment programs could be abolished — has come up over and over again,” Lee said, addressing the annual conference of the California State Rural Health Association.
Premium Hikes Report May Be Kindling for California Initiative
Premiums for employer-based health insurance increased by 50% nationally in the seven years before passage of the Affordable Care Act, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Fund. The report comes at the start of a statewide campaign for a ballot measure to give California authority over health insurance rate hikes.