Posts Tagged: medi-cal
Opinion
OPINION: The mother on the other end of the phone call was worried about her newborn’s increased fussiness and stomach issues. After taking a thorough history, the problem became clear: The mother had switched from breastmilk to a formula that triggered symptoms related to the baby’s known history of milk protein allergy. I advised a switch to a hydrolyzed formula.
Opinion
OPINION: Millions of low-income Californians are about to have their prescription drug benefit change on January 1, 2021. Yet, you probably have not heard much about it. On his first day in office, Gov. Newsom proposed several bold initiatives to contain the cost of prescription drug prices, including “Medi-Cal Rx”, a change in how the state administers the prescription drug benefit for the nearly 11 million Medi-Cal enrollees who get their coverage through a health plan.
Podcast
This week we posted four special editions of the Capitol Weekly Podcast, broadcasting the content from our September 17 conference on health care in the Golden State. We focused this year on the unprecedented public health emergency: COVID-19. Exactly six months and one day after the first Shelter-in-Place order, we examined the response to the crisis and looked at what comes next.
Opinion
OPINION: The need for infection prevention opened the door for telehealth, and we cannot let that door slam shut after the pandemic. Telehealth is essential to expanding people’s access to health care and the health system’s capacity.
News
As California contends with a shortage of primary care doctors, some legislators are pushing to have nurse practitioners fill in the gaps. Assembly Bill 890, which is now headed to the Senate, would remove the requirement that nurse practitioners practice under a physician’s supervision.
Opinion
OPINION: For most patients, interpreting medical information can feel like interpreting a new language – the jargon and industry language requires reading comprehension comparable to the SATs. But imagine if that challenge also included interpreting mistranslated language. What’s a health consumer to do?
News
In the most recent year for which an estimate is available (2015), California received about $77 billion in census-related funding—more than 80% of the total federal funds the state received that year. A number of federal programs draw on population estimates derived from the 2010 Census to calculate the share of federal funding for each state. The 2020 Census will soon update these estimates.
Opinion
OPINION: A few months ago, I turned 19 years old. Approaching the last year of my teenage years should have been exciting, but instead it was bittersweet. On my birthday, I lost access to my Medi-Cal coverage and all of the preventative health care services that it provided. I spent the days leading up to my birthday rushing to complete all of the final health check-ups I could fit in, before I lost coverage – possibly forever.
Opinion
OPINION: I first started having problems with my kidneys when I was 11-years-old. By the time I was 20, I was on dialysis. I was able to keep my kidneys for a while, but as often happens with kidney disease, the illness eventually took over. Almost 40 years and three kidney transplants later, I have beaten the odds by staying alive, but only because of the dialysis treatment I receive every day.
Recent News
The Madera patient says he likes his Kaiser doctor and has no desire to switch to publicly funded Medicare, even though he qualifies. But if Senate Bill 1156 is approved, Adames likely wouldn’t get that choice. The bill would require that patients like him receiving third-party assistance would either need to enroll in Medicare or Medi-Cal (for those who are low income), or if they choose to stay on private insurance, they will only receive reimbursement at Medicare or Medi-Cal’s much lower rates.
A physician uses his cell phone for a medical discussion. (Photo: apr.org)
