Latest California Healthline Stories
Assembly Sends Health Insurance Regulation Bill on to Senate
Assembly Republicans really didn’t want to hear about AB 52 yesterday.
First there was a motion to block the bill to regulate health insurance rate increases because bill language had been amended the day before. The Assembly voted to reject that objection by waiving the one-day waiting period.
Then Assembly member Curt Hagman (R-Chino Hills) balked at hearing the bill a little earlier in the agenda. “I know we lost the motion to bring this up [in the first place],” he said, “but this is also out of order at this point.”
Should Insurance Companies’ Rates Be Regulated?
To get a picture of how much political heat AB 52 generates, you only have to look at its last committee hearing.
The bill, which would allow California’s Department of Insurance to review and limit the size of health insurers’ rate hikes, is expected to hit the Assembly floor for a vote today.
Last Friday, AB 52, by Assembly member Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) was up for a do-pass in the Assembly Committee on Appropriations. Those affairs are generally quick, without much fanfare — because so many bills go through Appropriations, the actual voting on all of the do-pass bills is rapid-fire.
Health Officials, Public Hospitals at Odds Over Fee
The state says it’s just shifting money around, and that everyone benefits from new federal financing tools known as CPEs — certified public expenditures.
Under the recent federal Medicaid waiver, California can get up to $400 million in federal funds for state-only programs, according to Toby Douglas, director of the California Department of Health Care Services. These are programs licensed or certified by the state providing care and services to a designated population, such as adult day health care or developmental disability care. Public hospitals provide some state-only services, and submit these certified public expenditures, or CPEs, to get federal matching funds.
“But we don’t have enough state-only expenditures, and public hospitals have expenditures beyond what they can get from the waiver,” Douglas said. “We can roll over that money … they get more federal funds, and we get to use their excess certified public expenditures to reach the $400 million mark.
‘Budget Dust’ Councils May Get Second Life
Three health care advisory committees were on the May revise chopping block, but now an Assembly subcommittee has voted to keep them.
When Assembly member Allan Mansoor (R-Costa Mesa) found out that one of the commissions up for elimination — the California Commission on Emergency Medical Services — was composed entirely of volunteers who are experts in their field, and that the state pays only for travel expenses for a grand total of $9,000 a year, he wondered aloud about the urgent need to disband it.
“If we’re going to review a commission,” Mansoor said, “let’s find one with a few more zeroes after it, maybe we want to find a more expensive commission to eliminate.”
Careful Steps in Dismantling Mental Health Agency
It’s a big move, eliminating an entire department of important state services.
Over and over yesterday, in two separate health and human services budget subcommittee hearings, officials insisted that eliminating the California Department of Mental Health was not a diminishment of services, but rather a reorganization.
“There are ways we can create better efficiencies, better ways of integrating behavioral and physical health,” Toby Douglas of the Department of Health Care Services said. “It will happen gradually, it will happen over the next year. We want to work with the Department of Mental Health, to make mental health an essential component of health care delivery.”
Wet Protest, Dry Policy in Capitol
Diana Dooley summed it up nicely.
“First of all, I wanted to thank you all for the heavy lifting you did in March,” the secretary of California’s Health and Human Services Agency said yesterday in addressing members of a budget subcommittee on health and human services.
“These were difficult proposals to make, and difficult ones to respond to,” she said.
“And, regrettably, it’s not enough.”
Subcommittee Votes To Help CalWORKS Kids
The dog-and-pony-show nature of the budget subcommittee hearings was upended yesterday in a hearing on health and human services cutbacks.
The surprising vote at the tail end of yesterday’s hearing comes one day in advance of a flurry of subcommittee hearings in the Capitol building today, with accompanying Capitol demonstrations expected outside.
Also today, the Senate Rules Committee is expected to confirm the appointment of David Maxwell-Jolly as the new deputy director of California’s Health and Human Services Agency.
Payment, Practice, Patient Protection Collide
It looked like one of those slam-dunk legislative proposals. SB 173 by Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) cruised through the Senate Committee on Health on a 7-1 vote.
No one expected much opposition in a hearing yesterday before the Senate Committee on Appropriations. In fact, committee chair Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) started to move along after the bill’s presentation without asking if anyone was opposed to the bill. “Oh, there is opposition?” she asked.
There was.
Closure of ADHC Centers May Be Expensive
It’s budget week at the Capitol. A slew of legislative hearings will deal with the newest wave of cuts proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), most of which are expected to be approved.
The argument against health-related cuts almost always follows two points: The human toll of denying services is high; and in the long run, those cuts don’t actually save money. The reasoning is that health problems don’t go away and until people die, their health issues usually become more acute — and, in the long-term, more expensive.
In the case of adult day health care services, advocates say, the shift to higher-expense services has already started, and the state may not save any money, now or in the future, by cutting the $85 million needed to keep the program alive.
Time is Now To Reverse Hepatitis Trend, Experts Say
For years, advocates have been fighting hepatitis in relative quiet — but that may be changing, according to Rachel McLean.
“Last week the federal [Department of] Health and Human Services released its hepatitis action plan,” McLean said. “For HHS to say we’re going to do something, well, that’s a big deal.”
McLean is the hepatitis prevention coordinator for the state Department of Public Health, and she was part of a panel discussion yesterday in Sacramento. The event was part of the California Health Policy Forum, put on by the Center for Health Improvement and funded in part by the California HealthCare Foundation. CHCF is the publisher of California Healthline.