Latest California Healthline Stories
Think the wheels of Sacramento politics move slowly? Think again.
On Monday, when the California Legislature returns from its summer recess, the Senate Committee on Appropriations plans to conduct a session that is expected to last 12 hours — and possibly longer — when it takes up and either approves or denies 203 new laws.
If you do the math, that’s just 3 minutes and 31 seconds for each bill — to introduce, argue both sides, have questions answered and vote on each piece of legislation.
Quality Index Points Out Where California Lags
California provides poor quality health care in several categories such as respiratory care and immunization rates, according to a just-released national evaluation, which compares health quality markers from state to state.
California had high scores in home health care and maternal care. Overall, the state rating was smack in the middle of the average range.
“We are mandated to do national reports on health care quality,” spokesperson Karen Migdail of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) said. “Given the local nature of health care, states wanted to know what’s particular for their area. This provides a good snapshot of health care quality in a particular state.”
Judges Order Sacramento County to Pay Up
The showdown in court is over for now, and Sacramento County will need to come up with a better way to fund and manage its responsibility to care for the indigent and mentally ill.
That’s the word from three recent court decisions. At the end of last week, Sacramento County, which had already been hit with a temporary restraining order, accepted a longer-binding preliminary injunction to halt cuts and closures at its three public clinics, until a new plan can be worked out — one that offers better care to the county’s indigent patients.
That legal move came just one day after a U.S. District Court judge ruled last week against the county in a different court case, ordering Sacramento County to stop its plan to scale back some mental health services.
Research Targets Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s
Last week, Laurel Beckett of UC-Davis was just back from Honolulu, where she had been presenting her work at the annual Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease. It created quite a buzz in that segment of the research world.
“We have not had a lot of success in treatment, and usually by the time doctors have a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, there’s already a lot of damage to the brain,” Beckett said, adding, “Anytime we can move the time of diagnosis up, that gives researchers and physicians a better chance to treat it.”
Therefore, one of the goals of research has been to diagnose Alzheimer’s at a much earlier stage.
Making the Most of State Mental Health Efforts
It would be tough to call it integrated medicine. According to public health experts, the state of mental health care in California is more like a crazy quilt of mixed treatments, limited funding and uncertain outcomes.
That’s precisely what the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission hopes to change. The board was created by the Mental Health Services Act, passed by California voters in 2004. It convened Wednesday in Sacramento to iron out the details of how it hopes to evaluate the sprawling mental health system in California.
“This is a critical meeting for this commission,” said Larry Poaster, vice chair of commission.
Single Payer Bill Back in the Mix
The normally sedate audience at an Assembly health committee hearing broke into spontaneous applause last week as Senate member Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) stepped to the microphone. Leno was introducing SB 810, which would establish a single-payer health care system in California.
The burst of applause came from a busload of supporters in the hearing room. It has been a long, hard fight for single-payer advocates. Twice the idea has been approved by the state legislature, and twice it has been vetoed by the governor.
The single-payer system would bypass health insurance companies in California, handing the authority and responsibility of health care administration to the state. With passage of a national health care reform law, some expected the single-payer idea to wither on the vine. But at last week’s Assembly Health Committee hearing, it was alive and well.
Big Week Ahead — and the Budget Looms
You’re going to see a lot of bills passed this week, at least through the committee phase of legislation. This is the final week, ending July 2, for laws to be approved out of committee, so legislators are likely looking at long, agenda-packed hearings.
For instance, the Senate Committee for Appropriations meets today (Monday), with a grand total of 96 items on its agenda. Good luck with that.
Also, July 1 is the beginning of the fiscal year, and that leads into the next deadline: passing a state budget.
Booming Need for Senior Centers
Like all social services in California, senior centers are short of funding. They are struggling to maintain their current level of programs and services and on top of that they need to prepare for the huge wave of aging Baby Boomers about to hit senior centers across the state.
According to a report by the Congress of California Seniors released Tuesday to coincide with a legislative hearing on the subject, the state’s senior centers are in disrepair and ill-prepared to deal with the burgeoning number of Californians expected to join the senior ranks in the next decade.
“The demographic shift is so undeniable,” Assembly member Mariko Yamada (D-Davis) said. Yamada, chair of the Aging and Long-Term Care Committee oversight hearing Tuesday as well as a Boomer herself, said she’s been seeing the approach of what she calls the “silver tsunami” for years. She vows she and other seniors-to-be will work to get senior centers the infrastructure funding they need to survive and thrive.
ARRA Projects Move Ahead for Health IT, Broadband
Although health care reform has moved into the national spotlight, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 continues to develop health care-related projects and grant programs. This update summarizes significant developments over the past few months.
Assembly OKs High Risk-Pool to Protect ‘Uninsurable’
The state Assembly passed AB 1887 (Mike Villines, R-Clovis) that establishes a temporary high-risk health insurance pool program in California.
It’s designed to cover patients with a pre-existing condition who have been rejected for coverage by a private health plan. It would insure high-risk patients here for the next four years, until the federal government sets up a permanent health care exchange in 2014.
The legislation complies with new federal health care reform law, and allows the state to tap into $761 million a year in federal funds. High-risk coverage is expected to reach about 30,000 people in California.