Latest California Healthline Stories
Single-Payer Hopefuls Press Their Cause
Only in San Francisco can a guy wearing a rainbow rasta wig be a voice of reason.
But there he was, among an estimated 400 boisterous protesters, trying to keep the sidewalk clear so pedestrians could pass through the colorful event. Event organizer Don Bechler also was busy keeping the gathering legal and peaceful.
“America deserves a health care system that’s not broken,” said Bechler, chair of California-based Single Payer Now. “We want to get rid of the insurance companies and their bureaucracy of denial. It’s crazy that doctors need to spend so much time dealing with insurance companies — that’s madness to deal with that kind of bureaucracy.”
Budget Backs Off More Health Care Cuts
From a health care point of view, yesterday’s passage of the budget was notable for what was missing from it:
- Transition was delayed for moving 870,000 kids from Healthy Families into a Medi-Cal managed care program;
- Elimination of the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board also is on hold for now;
- In a plan that includes an additional $10 billion in budget corrections, there were no new cuts to health-related programs.
Changing the Way Hospitals Do Business
One of the tenets of health care reform is to provide incentives to raise quality, improve outcomes and lower costs.
That idea is what’s behind about $3.3 billion in federal incentives dangled in front of public hospitals in California as part of the Medicaid waiver deal completed late last year. A new policy brief from the California Association of Public Hospitals details some of those changes.
The deal in the waiver agreement — the Delivery System Reform Incentive Program — is a pay-for-performance initiative for 21 public hospitals in California. That change in performance is measured by meeting a myriad of different milestones.
Switching Programs a Complicated Task
Norman Williams would like to start with a basic premise: Adult day health care is important to the state of California.
Williams is a deputy director at the state Department of Health Care Services. “We consider this a valuable program, a real benefit for the people who use it,” Williams said.
That’s why Gov. Jerry Brown (D) allocated $25 million in transition money, Williams said, to assess the individual needs of people currently in the program and see where else they could be placed.
ADHC Lawsuit Might Proceed, Regardless
The official acronym change is from ADHC to KAFI — from the Adult Day Health Care program to Keeping Adults Free from Institutions.
The name change became official Friday with passage in the Senate of AB 96 (Bob Blumenfield, D-Woodland Hills). The bill would order the California Department of Health Care Services to file a federal waiver application for the new KAFI program “as soon as possible,” with an outside deadline of Sept. 1, 2011 — the same day the existing ADHC program is slated for elimination of its Medi-Cal benefit.
If the Assembly passes the budget as expected when it meets today, the package heads to Gov. Brown for his signature. Whether he signs it or not, senior and disability advocates plan to pursue the lawsuit filed last week against the planned elimination of Medi-Cal dollars from the current ADHC program.
Lawsuit Filed as Two More ADHC Centers Close
It will not be a good day today at the Robertson Adult Day Health Care Center in Sacramento.
“It’s our last day. It’s the day we’re locking our doors,” said Lyndsey Roush, program director at Robertson.
Robertson will be the sixth ADHC center to shut down since March, and a seventh center is expected to follow suit, with an announcement coming as soon as today.
Committees Talk Health, Move Budget
In passing the May revision out of the Assembly and Senate budget committees, a raft of legislators raised questions about the funding of health care programs, both present and future.
“This has been an arduous process, I must say,” Assembly member Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) said. “We have had to make some tough decisions — with almost half of the March actions, half of those March cuts coming out of health and human services. These are services that Californians rely on.”
The current budget revision includes more cuts to health-related programs, including the shift of 870,000 children from the Healthy Families program to Medi-Cal managed care.
Adult Day Health Care on Track?
Adult day health care is like the Polly Purebred of the California budget process — always in calamity, always one sinister flick of the mustache away from disaster.
Well, for the moment anyway, it looks like ADHC actually might be untied and lifted off the budget train tracks.
“We’re going to focus all our attention now on the governor,” Lydia Missaelides of the California Association of Adult Day Services said. “So he understands what’s at stake here.”
Basic Care, Medical Home, Home Care Act All Clear First Hurdle
A number of health care-related bills just met the deadline for passage out of house of origin. In a way, it’s a litmus test for whether or not bills have the political capital to become law, and quite a few health proposals made the initial cut.
The bills recently passed by the Assembly now head to the state Senate, and vice versa. Beyond the high-profile AB 52 by Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) to regulate health insurance rate hikes, there were several health-related bills that moved on:
Health Reform Legislation Regularly Assailed
Last week’s deadline to get legislation through the Assembly and Senate saw a number of big-ticket health care proposals make their way through the Legislature — including one bill to regulate rate hikes by health insurers, and another to launch a new kind of basic health care insurance program in California.
Many of the health-related proposals — especially ones that had anything to do with meeting federal guidelines for implementation of the federal health reform law in 2014 — met with resistance, skepticism and sometimes derision.