Latest California Healthline Stories
Progress Made on Stimulus Package Provisions, Funding
Over the last two months, the federal government has made significant progress in implementing various provisions of the 2009 economic stimulus package, including releasing the much anticipated final rule on “meaningful use.”
Customer Experience Ignored in Health Care?
Health professionals gathered in San Diego this week for the annual Health Unbound Conference to discuss the latest array of promising devices for making patients’ lives better — self-monitoring devices, home telehealth, social media and other e-health tools and advances.
But here’s the thing, said one speaker at the conference: There are so many useful devices and applications being developed to help patients achieve better health and longer lives, but getting those patients to use that technology can be a huge challenge.
“In general, health is a very intangible outcome,” Elizabeth Boehm of Forrester Research said, adding, “What does it mean to be slightly healthier? You’re talking about adding years to the end of my life, but the stuff that’s unhealthy has a shorter-term payoff. It usually tastes good, feels good, supplies immediate pleasure. It’s hard to get people to engage and use those long-term tools that make their health better.”
Berwick Takes Reins at CMS, But Reign Might Be Short
Donald Berwick’s selection to run CMS is among President Obama’s most influential policy decisions. However, the White House’s move to install Berwick via recess appointment has been criticized and may complicate his role in the reform law’s implementation.
State Makes Push for Coverage for Pregnant Women
A bill to require health insurance plans to include maternity care is on the doorstep of the Senate floor, but it will have to resolve some fiscal questions before it moves forward.
“Very simply, when women do not have maternity services as part of their heath insurance, or have maternity services that are substandard they end up going on state programs, like AIM, the Access for Infants and Mothers program, which is a subset of Medi-Cal (the state’s Medicaid program),” said bill author Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate).
“As of 2009,” he said, “about 1,400 women were enrolled with policies that did not cover maternity services, so the rest of us had to pay for it.” An even greater number had policies with high deductibles or inadequate coverage, De La Torre said, and they used state programs, as well.
Medical Professionals Make Their Mark on Reform
It was Kim Belshé, the Secretary of California Health and Human Services, who recently made an appeal for “not the politics of reform, but the policy of reform.”
What she meant is that working on the implementation of health care reform in California should be a grassroots affair — that politicians shouldn’t lead reform, but rather, health professionals should take the reins to revamp our health care system.
That’s the idea behind the town hall meeting, “Putting the Care in Obamacare,” that’s being held today (Monday) in Los Angeles, according to Leif Wellington Haase, director of the California program at New America Foundation, a nonprofit and nonpartisan group that’s putting on the conference.
Maintenance of Effort Looms Over Healthy Families, Budget
Federal regulators’ concerns about increased Healthy Families premiums illustrate budget implications of maintenance of effort provisions in the new federal health reform law.
Regulating Insurance Rate Hikes Could Be Costly
A funny thing happened on the way to passing a bill to regulate large health insurance rate hikes — it hit a wall of money.
The last hurdle in the state legislature for AB 2578 by Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) before getting its vote on the Senate floor was a quick stop in the Senate Committee for Appropriations. But on Thursday, the committee heard a cost analysis report presented by the Department of Managed Health Care that froze the legislation in committee — at least for now.
To implement the bill, the Department of Managed Health Care estimated the state would need to hire 110 high-priced actuaries, and an additional support staff of about 60 more people, at a cost of $23 million for the first year.
New Study Linking End-of-Life Directives With Hospitalization Has Implications for California
Kenneth Brummel-Smith of Florida State University College of Medicine, Judy Citko of the Coalition for Compassionate Care of California and Jeffrey Yee of Woodland Healthcare spoke with California Healthline about the study.
When Politics Becomes a Carnival
The annual California State Fair opened in Sacramento on Wednesday, and political activists from around the state gathered outside the Capitol Building to stage their own version of it.
They call it the Un-Fair.
Among the balloons and streamers on the South Lawn you could find the Wheel of Misfortune — where, no matter how hard you spin, the dial lands on a budget cut to a family service. There was the Pin the Tail on the Governor game, shell games for the kids and a fortune teller who apparently had a dark crystal ball and could only forecast bad outcomes.
UC-Irvine Center Shines Spotlight on Elder Abuse
The pioneering Center of Excellence on Elder Abuse and Neglect at UC-Irvine is helping to propel a once-invisible population into view, an effort aided by the inclusion of the Elder Justice Act in the federal health care reform law.