Latest California Healthline Stories
Health Reform Shifting From Planning to Action
California’s Health Benefit Exchange is about a year from testing, and the state is pushing ahead with changes to Medi-Cal, Medicare and Healthy Families. Participants at a conference last week in Sacramento tried to put all the health care reform action into perspective.
State Choices on Essential Benefits May Become More Complicated
Stakeholders are responding to HHS’ recent bulletin giving states a large hand in determining “essential health benefits” to be offered through insurance exchanges in 2014. In California, officials are trying to determine how to handle a growing list of state-mandated benefits within the exchanges.
Why We Can’t Get National Malpractice Reform
National medical malpractice reform has been stalled for years, and a newly released White House memo helps underscore why federal efforts have been a non-starter.
How Should California Measure Quality in Health Care?
The Obama administration earlier this month announced its initial set of health care quality measures in accordance with the Affordable Care Act. A California group recently released its suggestions for meaningful and usable measures. We asked California policymakers and stakeholders how California should measure quality in health care.
Single Payer 2 Votes Short in Senate
The idea of a single-payer health care system in California stalled on the Senate floor yesterday, falling two votes short of passage.
Reconsideration of the bill was granted, though, so proponents of SB 810 by Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) have until Tuesday to reintroduce the bill. First they will have to come up with two big votes. The bill failed on a 19-15 vote.
“We don’t want to follow the path of Europe, where the economy is in trouble, where the Euro is failing,” Sen. Ted Gaines (R-Roseville) said. “It’s not the example we should follow. We don’t have the money. I don’t know where the money’s going to come from.”
State of the Union: Time To Trim the Regulatory Fat in Health Care?
President Obama scarcely mentioned health care in last night’s speech — and perhaps that’s more of a metaphor than the president intended. In keeping with the Obama administration’s efforts to cut through “red tape,” efforts are growing to rein in federal health care regulations.
Appropriations Committee Moves Single Payer Toward Floor
After all the drama, controversy and heated debate over legislation to set up a single-payer health care system in years past, last week’s appropriations committee approval of the measure was strikingly brief and uneventful.
Like several other bills up for approval at last week’s hearing, there was no presentation on single payer — only a vote, followed by an eight-word pronouncement from Senate Committee on Appropriations Chair Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego):
“OK,” Kehoe said, “6 to 2, that measure is out.”
Lots To Do With Less Than Two Years To Go
It is an eventful month for the California Health Benefit Exchange board.
Tomorrow, it releases its final solicitation for technology to help run the exchange. Proposals are due at the end of this month for the communication, outreach, assisters and health plan management components of the exchange.
Meanwhile, Executive Director Peter Lee said at yesterday’s board meeting, the exchange has continued to hire new personnel and is now negotiating for office space to lease in Sacramento to accommodate all of those new hires.
Newly Enacted State Legislation Looks Toward Implementation of Federal Health Reform Law
John Arensmeyer of Small Business Majority, Diana Dooley of California’s Health and Human Services Agency and Anthony Wright of Health Access spoke with California Healthline about California’s efforts to prepare the state for changes under the federal health reform law.
It May Be Time ‘To Take the Pain’ on Medicaid
New Kaiser Family Foundation data illustrate the rise in Medicaid enrollment and lawmakers’ continuing struggle to control costs. Budget battles in Washington state, not Washington, D.C., may show the future of the program: stark efforts to slow utilization.