Latest California Healthline Stories
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.
Small, Rural Company Center Stage in Data Exchange
Redwood MedNet, a small company in rural Mendocino County, is about to launch California’s first contribution to the national Direct Project for electronic health information exchange. The company’s also working on a statewide immunization reporting system.
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.
Daunting Challenges Await Exchange Board
The five-member board directing the California Health Benefit Exchange will need to navigate a complex path as it takes steps to set up a statewide marketplace for health insurance coverage. Experts already are predicting a few pitfalls that will be especially challenging.
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..
One Small Judicial Step, One Giant Leap for Mandate?
Concerns about the health reform law’s legality have coalesced around the controversial individual mandate. A Florida judge’s decision to void the entire law based on the mandate may accelerate plans to find a replacement provision.
California Hospitals Taking Steps To Reduce Rates of Health Care-Associated Infections
Kim Delahanty of the UC-San Diego Health System, Kevin Reilly of the Department of Public Health and Debby Rogers of the California Hospital Association spoke with California Healthline about efforts to curb health care-associated infections.
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.”
In legislative terms, the last two weeks of subcommittee hearings were “lightning quick,” as Jean Ross of the California Budget Project put it.
The Senate and Assembly subcommittees for Health and Human Services listened to presentations and comment on sweeping changes to social service programs. Any one of those changes would normally go through a lengthy review process, but lengthy is a luxury in a budget that needs to be approved by March, just seven weeks after it was proposed.
This week, those subcommittees are expected to wrap up the business of reviewing roughly $12 billion in cuts, about half of that coming from health-related services and programs.