Latest California Healthline Stories
Deeper Cuts Won’t Come From Health Services
It was standing room only in the governor’s conference room yesterday, as reporters from around the state gathered to hear just how bad it was going to be.
Pretty bad, according to Jerry Brown.
“This is very difficult,” Brown said, as he announced his intention to cut about $6 billion from health-related services — everything from reducing child care subsidies to imposing co-payments for Medi-Cal services.
Brown Details ‘Painful’ Cuts to Health Care
Jerry Brown came out with details of his budget proposal today.
The cuts, which total $12.5 billion, include some large reductions in health care services, including:
Health Care Changes Happening — and Coming
Jerry Brown is expected to release his budget proposal today, and it won’t be pretty.
Some of those cuts are likely to hit health care programs in California. To be ready, Diana Dooley, the new secretary of Health and Human Services, recently appointed several familiar names to her team:
L.A.-Area Pharmacists Hope To Write Reform Prescription
Los Angeles-area pharmacists and pharmacy schools struggle with the disparate pressures of a contracting, recession-hampered industry that also faces significant growth as a result of health care reform.
Health Insurance Regulation Proposal Is Back
This week’s large rate hike announcement by Blue Shield makes the perfect backdrop for debating an Assembly bill to regulate those kinds of rate increases, according to Assembly member Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles), who introduced AB 52 last month.
“It sure adds fuel to the significance of AB 52,” Feuer said. “I am optimistic that the day is coming when insurers will need to justify increases like this.”
Feuer’s bill was eligible to go to committee yesterday.
Researcher Paints Scary Picture of State’s Future
The Medi-Cal system in California is flawed in a basic way, according to researcher Stephen Moses of Pacific Research Institute, a California-based think tank.
“Instead of Medi-Cal being a safety net for the poor,” he said, “it provides very generous benefits to many in the middle class, far more than just the poor.”
The state provides long-term care to people who might have had the means to pay for some form of that care in their lifetimes, Moses contends.
Inland Empire Hospitals Work Around Drug Shortages
Inland Empire hospitals have devised new strategies to deal with drug shortages that have resulted in higher fees for some medications, additional staff time and, at one hospital, delays in elective surgeries.
State Gathering Info on Hospital-Acquired Infections
The state Department of Public Health recently released its first report on “healthcare-associated infections” (HAI) — those infections patients actually get while they’re in the hospital, such as surgical site infections or the antibiotic-resistant staph infection known as MRSA. (The full name of MRSA is the methicillin-resistant staphyloccocus aureus infection).
HAIs prompted some public outrage, both nationally and in California, and public health was charged doing something about it.
A year from now, state officials expect to have enough consistently compiled data to provide valid comparisons, officials said.
What You Missed While on Holiday Break
Washington, D.C., often goes quiet during the winter holiday season, but officials continued to pave the road to reform even as Congress was on break. Several agencies issued key guidance on implementing the federal health overhaul, and a number of new patient protections took effect last week.
Brown Takes the Oath of Office, Again
In a way, you could say there were three former governors of California on hand for yesterday’s inauguration ceremony: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gray Davis and… Jerry Brown.
It was the third time Brown has taken the oath to be the state’s governor. He mentioned that he was happy to be following in his father’s footsteps as governor “and, 36 years after my first inauguration as governor, even follow in my own,” he said.
At the end of his brief 17-minute speech, Brown summed it up this way: “Like our song says,” he said, “California, here I come, right back where I started from!”