The California agency that oversees the state’s low-income health plan vastly overstated the number of doctors who accepted patients through the state program last year, even as the number of people enrolled in the program was set to skyrocket under the federal Affordable Care Act, the California Health Report has found.
Consumers have been complaining this year that Covered California insurance plans have doctor’s networks that are too narrow. The doctors they want to see don’t accept the insurance, they say. While a relatively new problem for California’s upper- and middle-class residents, this situation has been a problem for the poor for decades.
OPINION: Just as patients don’t want to see a $15 charge for an aspirin on their hospital bill, hospitals don’t want to charge patients those prices. Hospital pricing has evolved because of decades of government regulations, cost shifts to private payers and unfunded government mandates (including expensive seismic retrofitting), inadequate Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, and the obligation for hospitals to treat all patients, regardless of ability to pay.
As it turns out, the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), known popularly as “Obamacare,” could be a boon to the California budget. Given how the ACA is structured, the state could end up spending less on an unlikely source – prison inmates. The ACA is designed to expand healthcare coverage to low-income
As the state shifts more and more responsibility to local governments, disputes over the size of the tab and who picks it up are growing.
In theory, the transfer of state authority to the locals, such as in the $6.3 billion realignment program in which some state prisoners are sent to county lockups and myriad
“Respect for other people’s rights is peace.” Benito Juarez’s words have rang in my ears ever since I organized farmworkers in the Central Valley, and most recently, as I reflected on the work that remains to be done to protect the health and well-being of all Californians, especially the most vulnerable.
Peace cannot exist
A major budget battle has erupted between the Brown administration and California’s counties over health-care spending, with the governor hoping to divert some $2.5 billion from the counties over the next three years.
At issue is money – initially, $300 million — that the counties use to provide care for the indigent. But Brown
California may think it’s saving big money by transferring children from Healthy Families to Medi-Cal, but it is missing the big picture.
In October 2012, the state announced that it would shift some 860,000 children from Healthy Families, California’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, to Medi-Cal, which reimburses physicians at lower rates. The move has
Health care reform is already helping real people struggling to obtain health insurance. I know, because my mother is one of them. But California faces crucial decisions this year, particularly regarding the expansion of Medi-Cal, and for the sake of people like my mom, it’s crucial that we get them right.
I was ten