Archived California Healthcare News

With the U.S. Supreme Court scheduled to hear oral arguments next month in a case that could directly impact how easily individual Americans are able to obtain health insurance, a new study by researchers at UCLA demonstrate how unstable the insurance situation had been in California until last year. According to the data by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, in 2013 more than one in eight Californians under the age of 65 had gone without health insurance for more than a year.

The sleek hospital tower that Johns Hopkins Medicine built in 2012 has the frills of a luxury hotel, including a meditation garden, 500 works of art, free wi-fi and a library of books, games and audio. As Zishan Siddiqui, M.D., watched patients and some fellow physicians in Baltimore move from their decades-old building into the Sheikh Zayed Tower, the internist saw a rare opportunity to test a widespread assumption in the hospital industry: that patients rate their care more highly when it is given in a nicer place.

California\'s three major health insurers are reaping significant financial benefits from the Affordable Care Act. Two of those insurers, the publicly-traded Molina Healthcare and Health Net, reported big gains in enrollment and revenue for the fourth quarter ending Dec. 31. The not-for-profit Kaiser Permanente also reported significant gains.

Superbug Contamination Reported At UCLA Health 

The UCLA Health system acknowledged this week that improperly sterilized endoscopes led to dozens of patients being exposed to a “super bug” that has claimed at least two lives to date.

Now there are three. Medicaid expansion bills, that is. After months of behind-the-scenes negotiations with legislators and members of Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration, the Kansas Hospital Association has introduced its expansion bill.

Low-income Californians are increasingly satisfied with the healthcare they receive, underscoring the impact of changes made by clinics and providers since the Affordable Care Act went into effect, according to a report released Wednesday. More than half of low-income patients – 53% — rated their quality of care as excellent or very good in 2014, up five percentage points from 2011, according to the survey by the Blue Shield of California Foundation. That means that about 400,000 patients were happier with their care, the report said. (Kaiser Health News receives funding from the foundation.)

The California Department of Public Health announced on Wednesday it had fined 10 hospitals a total of $700,000 for errors that placed patients in immediate jeopardy of losing their lives. Patients died in seven of the incidents, including one where a retained surgical sponge was found to be at fault.

If the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down tax credits for people buying health insurance on the federal exchange, about 8.2 million Americans in 34 states could lose their coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Most of the people likely to be affected are white, employed, and low- to middle-class. They also are concentrated in a single region of the country: the South. Health insurance rates in those states are expected to rise by as much as 35%, which may make coverage unaffordable even for those who don’t qualify for tax credits. Some believe that if the tax credits are disallowed by the Supreme Court, the underpinnings of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law would collapse.

Two of California\'s biggest providers announced community grants this week with a combined worth of nearly $10 million. Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente announced a grant worth $5.25 million that is earmarked toward improving cardiac and stroke prevention care in Northern California, while Dignity Health announced grants totaling more than $4 million.