Latest California Healthline Stories
Speeding Up Reform Learning Curve, One Clinic at a Time
The California Primary Care Association’s Ambassador program, which started partly as a political campaign to gain public support for health care reform, is evolving into a navigational tool and now is a model for other states.
Medicare’s Old Age Problem Is New Again
Is 67 the new 65? Republicans have again proposed hiking Medicare’s eligibility age as a gambit to extend program solvency. Some have championed the plan, but many policy analysts — and much of the public — are resisting the idea.
Dooley Named Interim Chair of Exchange Board
About 150 people crammed an auditorium in Sacramento to be part of history: The California Health Benefits Exchange board met for the first time — the initial big step toward implementing the first reform-prompted insurance exchange in the nation.
“If we succeed, we will set the health care reform agenda for the rest of the nation,” board member Susan Kennedy said. “If we fail, we will precipitate the downfall of it nationally. And we are fully committed to seeing it succeed.”
The first day of the board was a busy one.
Insurance Agents Try To Broker Deal on MLR
Few stakeholders have been as quickly affected by the health reform law as insurance brokers — and few have pushed back against the law as speedily. Brokers’ battle to change medical-loss ratio rules is a microcosm of the broader fight to shape the overhaul’s implementation.
Research Geared to Real-World Results
Francis Collins is on the cusp of something big. Several somethings big.
Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told journalists about a number of possible breakthroughs in clinical and policy breakthroughs during the Association of Health Care Journalists annual conference in Philadelphia.
“This is a golden era in terms of understanding disease,” Collins said. “But there is still a daunting gap between fundamental knowledge and application of that knowledge.”
Experts Look to Mass. for Health Care Lessons
Massachusetts, a potential classroom for other states embarking on health care reforms, was the focus of a panel at the annual Association of Health Care Journalists conference in Philadelphia.
Cash, Credits, Peer Support Incentives To Alter Bad Health Habits
Paying workers to take care of themselves could seem like an odd notion, but California businesses are funding wellness incentive programs to encourage employees to live healthier lives and in turn miss less work, be more productive and cut medical costs.
Taking Stock of Three Major Health Reform Laws on Their Birthdays
Last year’s federal health overhaul, the Massachusetts health reform law and the groundbreaking EMTALA all marked significant anniversaries in recent weeks. “Road to Reform” looks back on how the laws affected the nation’s health policy — and each other.
Four Is a Quorum — Exchange Board Gets To Work
Darrell Steinberg can take as long as he wants.
The Senate Rules Committee, headed by Steinberg, will appoint the fifth and final member of the California Health Benefit Exchange board, but the rest of the board has decided it needs to get started.
The exchange board’s first public meeting is scheduled Apr. 20, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Goldberg Auditorium at the Franchise Tax Board building on Butterfield Drive in Sacramento.
Selling Exchange as ‘El Mercado’
The Latino population will be a vital element of the new health exchange and a special effort should be made to involve them in it, according to Chad Silva of Latino Coalition for a Healthy California.
“As Latinos go in California, so will go California,” Silva said. “It’s really important that linguistic and cultural competency has to be structurally built into the exchange.”
Silva was part of a panel discussion on exchange strategy in Sacramento last week. He pointed out that projections point to a 52% Latino majority in California by 2050, and that the state is already one of the most diverse in the nation. He said the exchange would do well to court those consumers.