Latest California Healthline Stories
Some California School Children at High Risk for Whooping Cough Despite Vaccination Law
Linda Davis-Alldritt, a school nurse consultant for the California Department of Education, Marin County Public Health Officer Jason Eberhart-Phillips, Catherine Martin of the California Immunization Coalition and David Witt of Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Marin spoke with California Healthline about the state’s new whooping cough vaccine mandate.
Extra Year of Operation for PCIP?
A big topic at yesterday’s meeting of the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB) was the agency’s interaction with the state’s Health Benefit Exchange.
Programs MRMIB administers will eventually disappear, absorbed by the introduction of health care reform and the Exchange in 2014. That is fine with the board members at MRMIB, but they gently raised the idea yesterday that programs such as the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan might be continued for a year.
“This population will migrate to the Exchange, and that’s what we want,” board member Richard Figueroa said. “But also, we do have some things to offer, in terms of what we’ve learned about running a transparent process, the single rules engine, and how to get people into these programs and keep them there.”
Ruling Raises Questions for Mental Health Coverage
An appellate court ruling in favor of a Blue Shield of California policyholder with anorexia could change how health insurers cover mental illness. However, health plans and advocates are divided on the ruling’s effects.
Getting Business Involved in Health Discussion
Big decisions are being made in health care, many of them affecting California businesses, but the business community won’t have much say in those decisions if leaders don’t step up and participate in defining the future of the health care landscape.
That’s one of the points in a report due out today from the Bay Area Council. The report, “Road Map to a High Value Health System,” analyzes the sources of rising health care costs in California and outlines choices to lower those costs.
“The broader business community and organizations representing the business community have run the gamut from hostile to disengaged,” according to report author Micah Weinberg. “Our message is, if we don’t participate in this process, we’re going to get something we don’t like. So we wanted to make sure businesses get involved.”
As Health Jobs Grow, a Prescription for Smart Growth
Health care is facing a different kind of jobs debate. The sector has added more than one million jobs since the Great Recession began, but analysts warn that the jobs growth masks major concerns about labor productivity.
Many Opt Out of State’s ADHC Plan
In August, a letter and application packet went out to about 26,000 people in the adult day health care system, a program slated for elimination as a Medi-Cal benefit on Dec. 1.
Beneficiaries were asked to choose between three options: They could sign up for one of the managed care options; they could send in a form to opt out of those plans; or they could do nothing, and would be automatically enrolled.
The results are in: Of those 26,068 patients, 654 chose a managed care plan, and another 10,297 people did nothing and were automatically enrolled in a managed care plan. The majority — 15,117 people — chose to remain in their fee-for-service plans.
Health Care Reform for Small Businesses
The number one key to success for small businesses in the state’s Health Benefit Exchange is choice, according to several presenters at a panel discussion last week in Sacramento.
“You have to have choice, that’s the big thing,” Bill Wehrle of Kaiser Permanente said. “If you don’t have choice, people won’t sign up.”
Wehrle was part of a forum addressing the needs of small businesses in California, and what the state’s exchange needs to do to woo both small-business owners and their employees.
What Can California Learn From Healthy San Francisco?
San Francisco’s previously uninsured residents seem to be getting healthier, and health care providers generally are satisfied with the country’s first effort to provide government-sponsored health care access to all residents, according to a new report. We asked policymakers and experts what the rest of the state might glean from Healthy San Francisco.
WIC Program May Drop 110,000 in California
The federal government is preparing to cut $1.5 trillion over 10 years from its budget. Under some proposals or in the event automatic reductions are triggered if no compromise solution is reached, cuts could affect health care services for low-income individuals.
Reductions in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Women, Infants and Children program would mean fewer services for California kids, according to Laurie True, executive director of the California WIC Association.
“We would have to take people off the program,” True said. “We haven’t had to take people off this program for many, many years and we think it’s unacceptable.”
State Appeals Ruling on Disability Funding
In May, a federal judge issued an injunction to halt the state’s freeze on funding for programs for the developmentally disabled.
Yesterday, California attorneys were back in court, this time at the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Pasadena, to ask that the May decision be overturned.
Craig Cannizzo, who argued the case on behalf of individuals with developmental disabilities, said this case has far-reaching implications because the state did not get permission from CMS for the rate freeze.