Latest California Healthline Stories
Altered States: Paths to Reform Increasingly Diverge
Governors in Wisconsin, Alaska and Massachusetts are forging unique paths to custom fit health reform around their budget pressures and existing overhauls. The three states may serve as templates — or outliers — as the rubber starts to hit the road to reform.
What Would ACA Repeal Mean for California?
If efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act are successful — either in Congress or the Supreme Court — what happens next in California? We asked stakeholders and policymakers what direction health care reform might take if the current path is blocked.
Every two years, the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research conducts an extensive survey — with a county-by-county breakdown of income, ethnicity and health indicators of Californians.
The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) is the nation’s largest state survey. Yesterday, the center released its 2009 data, one day after issuing its first policy brief on the data, which looked at the recent rise in how many people will be eligible for Medi-Cal and under national health care reform.
That kind of information is vital in crafting the state’s health policies, according to E. Richard Brown, director of UCLA’s CHPR.
Biomedical Jobs No. 1 in San Diego Health Care Work Force
The recession has brought mixed results for the various sectors of San Diego’s health care labor market. The biomedical industry saw job gains in 2009, while hospitals consolidated or froze jobs. Although nursing graduates are struggling to find work in the region now, hospital officials predict future shortages of nurses and allied health professionals.
About 3 Million New Medi-Cal Enrollees?
The number of Californians who will be eligible to participate in the federal health care coverage expansion in 2014 is higher than previously thought, according to a new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, based on data from the 2009 California Health Interview Survey.
About 4.7 million people will be eligible for the new coverage options, and about 3 million of those people qualify for Medi-Cal, according to Shana Alex Lavarreda, lead author of the UCLA policy brief.
“We were surprised by the number of people eligible for Medi-Cal, about 3 million, under the federal expansion,” Lavarreda said.
What Does Obama’s Budget Hold for Health Reform?
President Obama’s proposed budget would ramp up federal spending on the health reform law in an effort to help carry out its provisions. The proposal has renewed GOP criticism that the White House is overextending the government’s role in health care and is pushing off hard choices on health costs.
Daunting Challenges Await Exchange Board
The five-member board directing the California Health Benefit Exchange will need to navigate a complex path as it takes steps to set up a statewide marketplace for health insurance coverage. Experts already are predicting a few pitfalls that will be especially challenging.
One Small Judicial Step, One Giant Leap for Mandate?
Concerns about the health reform law’s legality have coalesced around the controversial individual mandate. A Florida judge’s decision to void the entire law based on the mandate may accelerate plans to find a replacement provision.
Filling Out the Powerful Exchange Board
The board of the Health Benefit Exchange is going to be small and mighty.
It will be responsible for implementing the first, and probably largest, health insurance exchange in the nation. This exchange will concentrate the health insurance buying power of millions of Californians, and will be the central force in implementing national health care reform in California.
It will be run by five people. Three of the board’s members are in place. Former Governor Schwarzenegger named two of them: his chief of staff Susan Kennedy, and the former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kim Belshé. The third member, by statute, is the current head of CHHS, Diana Dooley, appointed CHHS secretary two months ago by Governor Brown.
When Health Repeal Was ‘Catastrophic’
Talk of rolling back the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is dominating the news, but this isn’t the first time that Congress has weighed suddenly overturning a major health law. Does the battle over the 1988 Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act — and its repeal 17 months later — hold any lessons for today?