Latest California Healthline Stories
About 3 Million New Medi-Cal Enrollees?
The number of Californians who will be eligible to participate in the federal health care coverage expansion in 2014 is higher than previously thought, according to a new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, based on data from the 2009 California Health Interview Survey.
About 4.7 million people will be eligible for the new coverage options, and about 3 million of those people qualify for Medi-Cal, according to Shana Alex Lavarreda, lead author of the UCLA policy brief.
“We were surprised by the number of people eligible for Medi-Cal, about 3 million, under the federal expansion,” Lavarreda said.
Open Enrollment Window Closing
It’s open enrollment season and this year that means a little more in California.
Several state officials and health advocates gathered at UC-Davis Medical Center in Sacramento yesterday, to make sure parents understand there are some new rules about health care for children.
New federal and state legislation means that children with pre-existing conditions cannot be denied coverage, nor billed at excessive rates. And right now is the time to sign up children for coverage, according to Assembly member Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles.
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.
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.
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..
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.
Filling Out the Powerful Exchange Board
The board of the Health Benefit Exchange is going to be small and mighty.
It will be responsible for implementing the first, and probably largest, health insurance exchange in the nation. This exchange will concentrate the health insurance buying power of millions of Californians, and will be the central force in implementing national health care reform in California.
It will be run by five people. Three of the board’s members are in place. Former Governor Schwarzenegger named two of them: his chief of staff Susan Kennedy, and the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kim Belshé. The third member, by statute, is the current head of CHHS, Diana Dooley, appointed CHHS secretary two months ago by Governor Brown.
State Budget Plan Is ‘Ugly Beyond Belief’
The annual conference of the Insure the Uninsured Project (“From Reform to Reality: Building Better Systems of Care in California”) was supposed to focus on Medi-Cal expansion, the rollout of the health benefits exchange and how to get insurance coverage for the 6 million Californians who go without it.
But it was pretty hard to ignore the $12 billion in cuts to state programs proposed by Governor Brown — with roughly half of those cuts impacting health services.
The national rancor over the attempt to repeal health care reform slipped into the statewide conference. Orange County is about to announce that it will not be part of the California Health Benefit Exchange.