Latest California Healthline Stories
Insurers Called ‘Essential Partner’ in Reform
Jay Angoff, the federal government’s health care point man for consumers and insurers, told health insurers that they are “an essential partner” in reform. “You’ll have a profound influence on the direction our country takes,” Angoff said at a meeting of America’s Health Insurance Plans last week in Washington D.C.
Jon Kingsdale on Lessons from Massachusetts’ Experience With a Health Insurance Exchange
Jon Kingsdale, independent consultant and former executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, spoke with California Healthline about how California could learn from Massachusetts’ health benefit exchange.
Few Sources of Care for Uninsured in Inland Empire
A shortage of federally qualified health centers in the Inland Empire is posing a challenge for local health officials who are coping with a growing uninsured population. Overall, more than one million residents do not have insurance in the region, which spans a vast territory approximately the size of Maine.
Hope, Fear in State’s Community Clinics
There are some in the health care world who contend clinics caring for Medi-Cal patients and the uninsured are doomed to failure. Not so, according to a study released yesterday by the California HealthCare Foundation, which publishes California Healthline.
The report, Financial Health of Community Clinics, found that financially stronger clinics serve a high number of low-income patients and manage to have high reimbursement levels compared to financially weaker clinics.
Carmela Castellano-Garcia can explain that one. She’s president and CEO of the California Primary Care Association which represents more than 800 clinics and health centers in the state.
Exchanging Challenges in Health Plan Marketplace
While California is poised to emerge as a health reform leader with a new health insurance exchange, the state — like many — still faces numerous challenges over the exchange’s operation.
The best thing that happened to health insurance rate regulation was the last thing its proponents wanted to see.
When Anthem Blue Cross announced it planned to raise individual rates by as much as 39% back in February, it was the type of steep rate hike regulation proponents had been warning against for many months.
The public scorn and outrage prompted by that rate hike proposal was insurance regulation’s best friend — but, it turned out, was not enough to propel legislation.
California Set To Insure High-Risk Patients
On April 29, Governor Schwarzenegger signed legislation that established the state’s federally funded high-risk insurance pool. This week that insurance pool is accepting its first enrollee applications.
That means the government set up a complicated government program in about four months. In state bureaucracy terms, that is the blink of an eye.
“We’ve been working nights and weekends trying to make this happen,” Deputy Director for Legislative and External Affairs at the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board Jeanie Esajian said.
Employer System a Shaky Base for Health Reform
The health care overhaul built on the nation’s unique employer-based health insurance system, instead of revamping the model. However, a number of recent shocks to the system are creating new challenges for consumers and raising concerns ahead of coverage expansions in 2014.
California First With Exchange, but What Will It Look Like?
So far, there are more questions than answers about how California’s proposed Health Benefits Exchange would work. The goal is to pool risk and give the state — and its citizens — more buying power, which may mean lower premium rates and a wider array of choices in health plans.
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.