Archived California Healthcare News

Eight individuals in Southern California, including two physicians, were among 90 indicted nationwide on federal charges earlier this week for allegedly defrauding the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The indictments, which were announced on Tuesday, were part of the ongoing work of a strike force jointly operated by the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Gov. Brown’s Budget Proposal Calls For More Medi-Cal Funding

California Gov. Jerry Brown's current proposed budget revisions include an additional $1.2 billion for Medi-Cal program.

The headlines were ominous: Good luck finding a doctor under the Affordable Care Act. Not enough doctors for newly insured. The ACA-related doctor shortage could crash health system. Despite these dire predictions, the nation’s primary care system is handling the increased number of insured patients without major problems so far, according to interviews with community health centers, large physician practices and insurers nationwide.

Medical overtreatment is the inverse of former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography: while easy to define in concept, it can be hard to know it when you see it. A treatment that is appropriate for one patient can also be unnecessary or even counterproductive for another, depending on the patient’s condition.

Two ballot initiatives that would have capped both what not-for-profit hospitals could charge patients and how much they can pay its executives were officially shelved by their sponsor earlier this week in lieu of a closer alliance with the California Hospital Association. The Service Employees International Union-Healthcare Workers West had been gathering signatures for the two initiatives, which were due to the Secretary of State\'s office later this month, to place them on November\'s ballot.

California’s insurance marketplace for small businesses has attracted just a fraction of eligible companies, with most being deterred by technology glitches, paperwork delays and customer service problems. The program, designed to make insurance more affordable and easier to purchase for small businesses, has only attracted about 1,200 companies. There are roughly 700,000 small businesses in the state, and more than half could be eligible for tax credits under the health law, according to the Small Business Majority, a national organization of small businesses.

One of the Affordable Care Act’s successes is a provision that allows young people up to 26 years old to remain on their parents’ health insurance. Under a similar, but less-known provision, young adults who have been recently released from foster care can also get Medicaid coverage, regardless of their incomes. An estimated 180,000 foster care alumni became eligible on Jan. 1. About 26,000 young adults 18 to 22 years old are released from foster care each year and left to fend for themselves without state protections. The age that a young adult in foster care loses benefits varies across the states. The new health care provision for former young people without parents in the picture grants them full Medicaid coverage until age 26 in the state where they lived when they left foster care.

Korean-American women are far less likely to undergo regular mammogram screenings for breast cancer than any other ethnic group in California, according to new data from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. UCLA researchers concluded that just 51.8% of Korean-American women over the age of 40 in California have undergone a mammogram within the past two years. That compares to the statewide average of 79%.

California\'s hospitals ranked ninth in the nation in terms of safety, according to new data issued on Tuesday by the Leapfrog Group. And while just 41% of the 253 facilities graded statewide by Leapfrog received a score of “A,” that is significantly higher than the nationwide rate, which was about 32%. The Washington, D.C.-based Leapfrog\'s annual Hospital Safety Score ranks inpatient facilities on a variety of criteria, including the use of practices intended to avoid medical errors that lead to potentially fatal patient conditions.