Latest California Healthline Stories
Looking Back, Heading Forward: A Checkpoint on the Road to Reform
A year that began with unprecedented health reforms also featured unpredictable political twists and still unanswered questions over policy. As 2010 draws to a close, experts look back on the path to implementing the federal health law and what’s been tabled for next year.
Integrated Care at Heart of Health Reform?
As pressure ramps up to reduce health care costs and increase quality, there is a more pressing need for physicians and hospitals to work collaboratively. That was the word from Laura Jacobs of the Camden Group, who presented the core ideas at a recent briefing sponsored by the California HealthCare Foundation, which publishes California Healthline.
“The Affordable Care Act has certainly been an accelerator for the trend we’ve seen in physician-hospital integration,” Jacobs said. “Payment reform, which is an inherent part of the ACA, is one of the things that’s driving this acceleration, and in some ways modification, of the ways physicians and hospitals are integrated.”
In the recent past, she said, physicians had independent practices, and hospitals were concerned with operating their facilities. But with the introduction of managed care, physicians banded into group practices as a way to share risk, she said. Those practices, and the HMOs they dealt with, created a different relationship with hospitals.
California Up for Big Federal IT Grant for Exchange
The feds want to give a bushelful of health care grant dollars to California, and state officials definitely want to accept. The question is, can they meet the Dec. 23 application deadline?
Rationalizing Rationing in Arizona’s Medicaid Program
Both parties have debated whether the federal health reform law would lead to rationing. After Arizona’s unprecedented cuts to its Medicaid program, new questions have emerged about the difficult trade-offs around health care spending.
Governor Transition Might Hinder Grant
The new governor takes office on Jan. 3 — but that would be too late for California to apply for a large federal innovation grant, according to a number of health care advocate groups.
“We’re in this lull period,” Lucien Wulsin of the Insure the Uninsured Project said, “with the outgoing Schwarzenegger administration and the incoming Brown, there’s this whole handoff thing.”
And since the innovation grant application has to go in by Dec. 23, Wulsin said that’s a little worrisome.
How California’s Health Care Landscape Is Shifting
At a panel discussion in Sacramento yesterday, the line of the day belonged to Louise McCarthy, head of governmental affairs for the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County.
The phrase “elephant in the room” kept coming up throughout the discussion, and usually it referred to some health care money owed and not being paid by the state.
“It’s not an elephant in the room we’re dealing with,” McCarthy said. “It’s more of a pachyderm party right now.”
Myth-Busting the Reform Law: Sea Change or Scapegoat?
A number of organizations have painted the health reform law as a catalyst for changes in their industries. Yet some groups may be invoking the law as a scapegoat for transformations that would have happened anyway, or using it as a convenient platform on which to advance their interests.
Golden State Looks On as Others Threaten To Cut Medicaid
Can states pull out of the Medicaid program — and will they? The questions have taken on sudden importance, as some state officials suggest that health reform’s costs are too high and the federal program too restrictive.
Mapping Out Future for Rural Health Care
The problems faced by rural health providers go far beyond whether or not patients have insurance coverage, according to Danny Fernandez, legislative advocate for the National Rural Health Association, who spoke at the 10th annual conference of the California State Rural Health Association this week in Sacramento .
“At some point, ‘national health reform’ morphed into ‘national health insurance reform,’ ” Fernandez said. But it’s not just about making sure everyone’s insured, he said. “Our overall message to Capitol Hill was, if you don’t have access to a provider, then it doesn’t matter if you do or don’t have insurance coverage.”
That is probably the number one problem in rural areas throughout the state and nation, he said, along with a general lack of funding for rural health care. National health care reform, Fernandez said, might be able to address both concerns — by increasing funds through better insurance, and by offering incentives and programs to get medical providers into rural areas.
Policy, Not Punditry: Update on Three Key Provisions
Speculation over the midterm elections’ effect on health reform has threatened to overshadow recent regulatory developments. Work to date on high-risk insurance pools, medical-loss ratios and accountable care organizations shows there are roadblocks beyond politics that could hamper reform.