Latest California Healthline Stories
How Can State Hasten Payment Reform?
California is ahead of the national payment reform curve, but even in the Golden State most reimbursement for care is still measured by volume, rather than quality. We asked stakeholders how California can move more quickly and efficiently to a value-based payment system.
UPS Among the First To Dump Spousal Coverage. It Won’t Be the Last.
UPS’ eye-catching announcement to exclude 15,000 spouses of employees from its health insurance plan is being blamed, in part, on the Affordable Care Act. Here’s a closer look at the decision, whether it will be a tipping point for other firms and the zero-sum game behind dropping spousal coverage.
The Employer Mandate Debate Doesn’t Matter. Here’s What Does.
Republicans’ latest gambit to fight Obamacare by attacking the employer mandate is getting national headlines. But the one-year delay for the mandate is one of the least-interesting things happening to employer-based health care.
How Much Should We Care About Obama’s Budget?
The president’s new budget contains a slew of health care reforms — but given the slender chance they become law, what are the real ramifications? Several experts weigh in.
Wellness Programs: Big Brother, or a Big Idea Whose Time Has Come?
Obamacare encourages firms to incent employees to engage in healthy behaviors — but the media firestorm over a CVS plan underscores the fragile politics of workplace wellness programs.
Fiscal Cliff, Deals To Avoid It Worry Health Advocates
California health care advocates are worried about cutbacks under national budget sequestration. However, potential outcomes of a deal that would avoid the cuts concern some advocates even more.
Diana Dooley on 2 Years of Budget Cuts, Controversy and Reform
Diana Dooley reflects on her first two years as California’s Health and Human Services secretary — a tumultuous period of deep budget cuts, county and state realignment, and the beginning of historic reforms.
Health Policy and Winnie-the-Pooh
BALTIMORE — How health care is like A Bear of Very Little Brain:
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”
— A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
“That is what we are here to do — think of another way of doing things,” said Richard Gottfried, chair of the New York State Assembly Committee on Health and moderator of a well-attended panel on payment reform Tuesday at the National Academy for State Health Policy’s annual conference.
Educator Praises Health Policy Officials for ‘Noble Work’
BALTIMORE — “I would argue that what you face in health care is very similar to what we face in education — revenues are down and needs are up,” Freeman Hrabowski III said in his keynote address Monday at the opening of the National Academy for State Health Policy’s 25th annual conference.
Quoting poets William Carlos Williams and Maya Angelou and evoking the legacies of Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King Jr., Hrabowski told state policy wonks “the work you do is noble, but the situations we face are not easy. It comes down to how you respond. Aristotle said ‘excellence is never an accident.’ I think we need to remember that as we move forward,” Hrabowski said.
Hrabowski — president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County and one of Time Magazine’s choices of the 100 most influential people in the world — did his homework before addressing the NASHP crowd.
Why the Future of Health Care May Be on the Line With Prop. 30
If Proposition 30 fails to pass in the upcoming November election, billions of dollars worth of trigger cuts would kick in, cutting education funding drastically in California. But, it turns out, health and social service programs also have a lot riding on this election.