Latest California Healthline Stories
How Budget Morass Could Spring One Bill From Limbo
The Assembly and Senate both passed a bill on the last day of the legislative session, but it ended up being put on hold after Republicans closed ranks and refused to approve it on concurrence.
According to the state’s Chief Clerk, E. Dotson Wilson, it is currently the only bill that could get a re-vote when the Legislature gathers to decide on the budget. AB 1542 by Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) would encourage establishment of patient-centered medical homes.
“Because it has an urgency clause, it is eligible to be taken up again when the legislature votes on the budget,” Wilson said. “There is a window there.”
Single Payer Goes Quietly Into That Last Night
All night long, Assembly watchers waited and wondered: When would the bill be presented to vote on establishing a single payer health system?
The answer was: Not this night. Not in this legislative session.
Political insiders sat around and wondered why Assembly speaker John Perez decided not to present a vote on SB 810 by Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), which had been passed in the legislature twice before, and vetoed twice before by Governor Schwarzenegger.
Hospitals May Need To Monitor CT Scan Radiation
There is no written record in hospitals whenever radiation, particularly CT scan radiation, is given in higher-than-prescribed doses. And that’s what AB 1237 by Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima) wants to change.
“We don’t know exactly what the risks are for accumulated radiation. But it could be pretty serious. This simply begins a data-keeping, a record at hospitals around the state,” Padilla said. “We want to make sure that whatever the dose it is, that’s what should be administered.”
The bill establishes procedures to track radiation dosage, by requiring that all CT scan dosages should be recorded electronically, and it orders an annual verification of equipment. Any incidents of over-radiation would be reported to the California Department of Public Health.
Medical Home Bill Passes Senate
In the last hours of a late-night vote, the Legislature passed a bill that establishes the Patient-Centered Medical Home Act of 2010. Passage of AB 1542 by Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) did not come easily. It failed a vote the day before, and only got the votes it needed at the end of the final day of the session.
(Update: New developments are covered in the Sept. 7 Capitol Desk.)
A relieved Dave Jones practically bounced out of Senate chambers when several Senate members changed their votes and the bill passed.
Rescission Bill Makes the Cut, Goes to Governor
Fiona Ma had the line of the day. The Speaker Pro Tem was leading the Assembly through its paces, through one bill after another, long into the day. In the late afternoon, she announced that she would lift the call vote on six items — usually a sign of wrapping up the day’s proceedings.
“Now don’t get excited,” Ma said, looking up from speaker’s desk. “We’re not going home yet.”
In fact, the Assembly and Senate worked all day, and then convened for rare night sessions yesterday. They passed a number of bills, including several health-related ones.
Should Insurers Raise Rates Whenever They Want?
Health insurers typically raise rates when customers reach a higher age bracket. It’s pretty simple, according to John Lovell of the California Association of Health Underwriters.
“The way premiums are raised is age brackets of 5 or 10 years,” Lovell said. “I always talk to my clients in the year they’re going to get a rate increase. The amount it goes up is just a trend — I notify my clients so they’re not surprised. It cuts down on the rate shock.”
But California policymakers have a different kind of rate shock in mind. The shock of two rate hikes in a year.
Legislature Approves Health Care Bills
The days are dwindling down to a precious few. By next Tuesday, the state legislature must approve or reject all the bills on its docket.
That means it has three more days to vote.
Many bills have passed this week, but several high-profile bills are still hanging, and expected to be heard and voted on today.
Health Plan Pooling Bill Moves to Governor’s Desk
This week’s approval by the state legislature of the creation of a statewide health benefit exchange would eventually result in competition between health plans in the exchange.
A bill passed yesterday is designed to help public health plans compete more robustly with the larger private health plans, by allowing public plans to pool risk and share networks for the joint offering of health plans.
The idea of SB 56, by Sen. Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara) is to ensure competition and make a broader array of affordable plans available, according to John Ramey, the executive director of Local Health Plans of California.
The Decision Turf Between Care Providers and Patients
There has been a shift in medicine toward involving patients more in decisions about their own health. In an article in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association, a California physician explains how that outwardly time-consuming process could not only make patients happier with their care, but might actually save time for care providers.
Time is short for physicians, especially these days. And that’s one of the reasons the patient-doctor dynamic shifted from one extreme to another, according to Alexander Kon, who has been a pediatric intensive care physician at UC Davis (though he is soon taking his talents to San Diego, to the Naval Medical Center there).
About two decades ago, Kon said, many physicians embraced a new model of care, where the doctor provides information and leaves the final decision about treatment options up to the patient. Which is both good and bad, he said.
The long fight that is national health care reform has had one large skirmish that netted about $3 billion in reimbursement money for California.
That’s the word from the California Hospital Association (CHA), and it is the driving reason behind giving its annual Health Care Hero award to a Congressman from California, Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Merced).
“It’s an award to individuals who have done a particularly heroic job in health care,” Jan Emerson of the CHA said. “He played a key role in ensuring that $3 billion that was slated to go to other hospitals in other states, instead stayed in California.”