Latest California Healthline Stories
What Can Brown Do for Senior Health Issues?
Just because the California political landscape is in transition and its budget in disarray, that doesn’t mean the state still doesn’t have pressing needs and opportunities for its seniors, according to Gretchen Alkema of the SCAN Foundation, a not-for-profit that looks at long-term care issues.
“Time is of the essence,” Alkema said. “The reality is, individuals with long-term needs, that doesn’t change with the budget situation.”
So even though Jerry Brown and newly elected legislators won’t take the oath of office till January, the SCAN Foundation released a policy brief yesterday on the long-term care challenges and possible solutions for seniors in California.
DMHC Not Listening to Complaints?
What if you gave a legislative oversight hearing, and the object of that hearing didn’t show up?
That was the case last week, when the Budget Subcommittee on Health and Human Services conducted an oversight hearing to deal with complaints about the Department of Managed Health Care. Emergency department officials, who feel they’ve been grossly and routinely underpaid by some insurance organizations, say the DMHC is supposed to adjudicate those conflicts, but has instead been ignoring them.
“This is extraordinarily disrespectful. I’m extraordinarily displeased they decided not to participate,” Assembly member Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) said.
Developmentally Disabled Centers Get a Hearing
A state audit raised some concerns about some of the financial steps taken by some of the state’s California Regional Centers. The centers are designed to help patients with developmental disabilities.
“Many changes have occurred recently, including losing about $500 million in funding,” oversight chair and Senate member Carol Liu (D-La Canada Flintridge) said. “Such changes make it imperative to look at how to provide these necessary services in a cost-effective way.”
“Over $4 billion goes through these centers,” Assembly member Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate) said. “So if something isn’t as efficient as it can be, we need to fix it. Our goal is to watch that money, because that’s a hell of a lot of money.”
Mapping Out Future for Rural Health Care
The problems faced by rural health providers go far beyond whether or not patients have insurance coverage, according to Danny Fernandez, legislative advocate for the National Rural Health Association, who spoke at the 10th annual conference of the California State Rural Health Association this week in Sacramento .
“At some point, ‘national health reform’ morphed into ‘national health insurance reform,’ ” Fernandez said. But it’s not just about making sure everyone’s insured, he said. “Our overall message to Capitol Hill was, if you don’t have access to a provider, then it doesn’t matter if you do or don’t have insurance coverage.”
That is probably the number one problem in rural areas throughout the state and nation, he said, along with a general lack of funding for rural health care. National health care reform, Fernandez said, might be able to address both concerns — by increasing funds through better insurance, and by offering incentives and programs to get medical providers into rural areas.
Rural Health Clinics Getting Short-Changed?
There was an interesting moment at this week’s annual conference of the California State Rural Health Association. During one of the presentations, a sit-down with two state Assembly members — V. Manuel Perez (D-Coachella) and recently elected Linda Halderman (R-Fresno) — the conversation seemed to veer away from rural health issues.
After hearing about high unemployment, the icy regulatory climate, too much government and arsenic contamination of water supplies, host Steve Barrow gently redirected the conversation.
“You know, rural [medicine] gets lost a lot in the Capitol,” he said. “We care about clean water, and cultural issues, and economic issues — but if we’re talking about economics in rural California, 11 percent of the rural economy is health care. Health care is a big part of economics in rural areas.”
If E-Prescribing’s So Great, Why Is It So Difficult?
Some people might think that since California has such a big head start on the rest of the nation in some arenas of health care reform, that it would also be taking a lead role in launching a program for e-prescribing — the electronic communication of prescriptions between physicians and pharmacists.
But those people would be wrong.
“California is 45th in the nation,” Ned Hanson, director of formulary management at Health Net Pharmaceutical Services, said. “We’ve been looking at anywhere from 8 to 10 percent adoption.”
Overuse of Health Services May Be a Myth
This week, at the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association in Denver, researchers analyzed survey data from California — investigating the concern that immigrants are a major drain on health care services.
“People looked at immigrants and undocumented workers and their use of emergency services and preventive care, and found that those groups are actually less likely than other groups to use health care services,” according to David Grant, director of the California Health Interview Survey.
“The data show [lower usage] of emergency services, as well as lower usage of preventive medicine, even among immigrants who have insurance,” he said.
Healthy Interest in Reform from Small Businesses
California’s small businesses are embracing the tenets of health care reform, according to John Arensmeyer, CEO of the Small Business Majority.
“The more people learn about it, particularly about the tax credits [offered by the Affordable Care Act], the more interested they are,” Arensmeyer said. “The real problem is that it’s a little unknown, so it’s important to get people to understand what’s in it.
According to a recent report by Bernstein Research in New York, more small-business employers — those with three to nine workers — are offering health insurance this year. Nationally, the number of small businesses offering insurance increased by 13 percentage points in a year, from 46% to 59%.
Primary Care Might Get its Due With Health Reform
It’s hard to delineate the possible progress being made in fixing the primary care problem in California and the nation, without first looking at how bad that problem is, according to Kevin Grumbach of the UCSF Department of Family and Community Medicine, who addressed an audience of health professionals at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento this week.
“Health systems and regions built with primary care have better outcomes, better quality of care, lower costs and more equitable care,” Grumbach said.
“The trouble is, we’re finding that the whole foundation of primary care is crumbling.”
New Commissioner Eager To Get Started
The role of California’s insurance commissioner will change quite a bit during the current term. It’s a job that oversees a huge agency, with 1,300 employees charged with evaluating, regulating and policing the home, car and other insurance industries in California. Its approach to health care insurers, though, historically has been different than its authority over other insurance industries. That is about to change and expand in several ways.
After Tuesday’s election, the new commissioner, Dave Jones, said he is “eager and excited” to oversee those changes.
“I’m looking forward to all of it,” Jones said. “I’m excited at the prospect of making this office the state’s most important consumer protection agency. And I’m excited at the prospect of playing a leadership role in implementing health care reform in California.”