Latest California Healthline Stories
Lessons Learned From PacAdvantage Failure
The Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH) has had some experience in running a small group purchasing pool. It’s the organization that took over the Health Insurance Plan of California (HIPC), which was renamed the Pacific Health Advantage or PacAdvantage and operated for a total of 13 years, ending in 2006.
That organization was similar in concept to California’s Health Benefit Exchange. A new report from PBGH outlines some of the lessons the exchange might learn from PacAdvantage’s slow demise.
“The biggest lesson is, exchanges are naturally vulnerable to adverse selection,” according to report co-author Bill Kramer, the executive director of national health policy at PBGH. “When the Pacific Business Group on Health took over HIPC, it was inheriting an adverse selection problem. At a certain point, the adverse selection becomes irreversible and there’s no way to get out of it.”
Remember the Co-Ops? Overlooked Plan Raises Questions
Two years after lawmakers and activists battled over the fate of the public option, its erstwhile replacement — a plan to create health cooperatives — was finally unveiled last month.
Exchange Board Handles New Move Quietly
During the most recent board meeting of the California Health Benefit Exchange, board members gingerly approached the last item on the agenda — would the board stick its toe in political waters?
“I don’t know that it’s the board’s place to do this,” board member Paul Fearer offered at one point. Chair Diana Dooley, secretary of the state HHS agency, announced right at the start of the meeting she would abstain from legislative issues.
But clearly the board felt it was the board’s place to get involved in legislative waters — past the toes and ankle and maybe up to the knee — as it voted 3-0 on several motions to involve the exchange board’s input and opinion on half a dozen legislative bills.
Incentives for Public Hospitals a Microcosm of Reform Goals
Want to know how national health care reform might look? Take a look at what California’s public hospitals are doing. They are in the second year of a five-year plan that shares many of the same goals as the Affordable Care Act.
New Online ‘Refor(u)m’ for State Health Issues
State efforts to enact national health care reform have proceeded at different paces — a situation made clear in a new online forum designed to help states implement the Affordable Care Act.
At a recent forum featuring representatives from North Carolina, New York and Virginia, the wide disparity of progress among the states became apparent.
It was part of an effort to get states to talk to each other about implementation of national health care reform, coordinated by a recently launched website.
Public Agency Takes Up Political Hammer
The board of the California Health Benefit Exchange voted last week to oppose a bill that would establish a basic health plan and to urge the lawmakers behind AB 52, which would regulate rate increases by insurers, to exempt the exchange from that law.
The board also voted to direct staff to work with legislators on four other bills that deal with the exchange — including two laws that directly refer to the exchange in their identifying titles.
All of the votes were 3-0, with member Robert Ross absent and chair Diana Dooley abstaining.
Ranking the Reforms at Risk in a Deficit Deal
As the nation’s leaders lurch toward a deal to cut the deficit, lawmakers have floated a range of possible health care cuts. Here’s a list of potential programs and reform initiatives that are most at risk in the current negotiations.
Incentive Plan Working for Public Hospitals
A big component of the federal Medicaid waiver California officials negotiated last year was the provision to set up an incentive program to redesign systems and improve quality in public hospitals.
It’s going well, apparently.
Melissa Stafford Jones of the California Association of Public Hospitals said all the state’s public hospitals “met their milestones.”
The Afterlife of ‘Death Panels’ Still Haunts Health Reform
False accusations that the health reform law would spawn “death panels” continue to cause political problems. A renewed push to strike down the Independent Payment Advisory Board relies on similar claims of government rationing.
Foundations Provide Helping Hand as States Take Steps To Implement Health Reform Law
Richard Figueroa of the California Endowment, Heather Howard of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, David Maxwell-Jolly of the California Health and Human Services Agency and Marian Mulkey of the California HealthCare Foundation spoke with California Healthline about how foundations are contributing to state health reform activities.