California Watch November 27, 2017 Medicaid Health
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CALIFORNIA WATCH NOVEMBER 27, 2017 California Healthline: California Winces at Trump’s Turn Back to ‘Bad Old Days’ of Health Plan Associations Just a few decades ago, small businesses in California often banded together to buy health insurance on the premise that a bigger pool of enrollees would get them a better deal. California’s dairy farmers did it; so did car dealers and accountants. But after a string of these “association health plans” went belly up, sometimes in the wake of fraud, state lawmakers passed sweeping changes in the 1990s that consigned them to near extinction. (Bartolone, 11/27) Ventura County Star: Seniors drawing Food Stamps at Record Levels in wake of Downturn Ventura County residents over age 60 are drawing food stamps in what appear to be record numbers, the figure rising by two-thirds in the past few years alone. Officials say the growth in the program renamed CalFresh conflicts with the pattern they have seen in the past. Many low-income seniors rejected the nutritional program because they saw it as welfare or felt it was too small a benefit to make the paperwork worth it, human services managers said. (Wilson, 11/25) MEDICAID The Hill: States Preparing for Children's Health Insurance Program to Run out of Funding Nearly a dozen states are readying for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which provides insurance to low-income children, to run out of funding, according to a report from The Washington Post. Five states are at risk of running out of funding for their individual programs by late December, according to the report. Other states reportedly have enough money to keep their programs afloat for a few more months at least. (Manchester, 11/26) HEALTH LAW Kaiser Health News: Marketplace Confusion Opens Door to Questions About Skinny Plans Consumers coping with the high cost of health insurance are the target market for new plans claiming to be lower-cost alternatives to the Affordable Care Act that fulfill the law’s requirement for health coverage. But experts and regulators warn consumers to be cautious — and are raising red flags about one set of limited benefit plans marketed to individuals for as little as $93 a month. Offered through brokers and online ads, the plans promise to be an “ACA compliant, affordable, integrated solution that help … individuals avoid the penalties under [the health law].” (Appleby, 11/27) Los Angeles Times: Republicans' Latest Plan to Repeal Obamacare's Insurance Requirement Could Wreak Havoc in Some Very Red States The Senate Republican plan to use tax legislation to repeal the federal requirement that Americans have health coverage threatens to derail insurance markets in conservative, rural swaths of the country, according to a Los Angeles Times data analysis. That could leave consumers in these regions — including most or all of Alaska, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada and Wyoming, as well as parts of many other states — with either no options for coverage or health plans that are prohibitively expensive. (Levey, 11/27) Reuters: Sign-Up Pace Slows in Third Week of 2018 Obamacare Enrollment The pace slowed in the third week of enrollment for 2018 Obamacare individual insurance as nearly 800,000 people signed up through the federal government website HealthCare.gov, down about 75,000 people from the previous week, a U.S. government agency reported on Wednesday. There was an increase, however, in the number of new consumers to the program created by former President Barack Obama, to 220,323 from 208,397 in the previous week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said. (Hummer, 11/22) MARKETPLACE Kaiser Health News: Taken For a Ride? Ambulances Stick Patients with Surprise Bills One patient got a $3,660 bill for a 4-mile ride. Another was charged $8,460 for a trip from one hospital that could not handle his case to another that could. Still another found herself marooned at an out-of- network hospital, where she’d been taken by ambulance without her consent. These patients all took ambulances in emergencies and got slammed with unexpected bills. Public outrage has erupted over surprise medical bills — generally out-of-network charges that a patient did not expect or could not control — prompting 21 states to pass laws protecting consumers in some situations. (Bailey, 11/27) Kaiser Health News: Surprise Ambulance Bills: A Consumer’s Guide What’s a surprise ambulance bill? When the ambulance service that picks you up is out-of-network, your insurer pays what it considers fair. And then — surprise! — the ambulance service sends you a bill for the rest. (Bailey, 11/27) PUBLIC HEALTH AND EDUCATION NPR: Light Therapy Might Help People with Bipolar Depression As the months grow colder and darker, many people find themselves somewhat sadder and even depressed. Bright light is sometimes used to help treat the symptoms of seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. Researchers are now testing light therapy to see if it also can help treat depression that's part of bipolar disorder. It's unclear how lack of light might cause the winter blues, although some suggest that the dark days affect the production of serotonin in the skin. (Neighmond, 11/27) The Washington Post: Having Trouble Sleeping? It is not Just Because of Aging Many older adults have sleep problems that can be caused by aging. But other issues also contribute to the prevalence of sleep complaints, and they should be discussed and investigated, experts say. A national poll conducted by the University of Michigan and released in October found that almost half of those 65 and older have trouble getting to sleep, and more than a third are taking prescription or over-the- counter sleep aids. (Sadick, 11/26) NPR: Human Brains Have Evolved Unique 'Feel-Good' Circuits A brain system involved in everything from addiction to autism appears to have evolved differently in people than in great apes, a team reports Thursday in the journal Science. The system controls the production of dopamine, a chemical messenger that plays a major role in pleasure and rewards. "Humans have evolved a dopamine system that is different than the one in chimpanzees," says Nenad Sestan, an author of the study and a professor of neuroscience at Yale. (Hamilton, 11/23) EDITORIALS AND OPINIONS Huffington Post: The GOP Crusade against Obamacare’s Mandate says a lot about how the Party Changed Senate Republicans are set to vote next week on tax legislation that would eliminate the financial penalty for people who don’t get health insurance, often called the “individual mandate.” And plenty of Republicans seem positively giddy about the prospect. ... Republicans and their supporters have been bashing the individual mandate so loudly and so vociferously that it’s easy to forget this outrage is a relatively recent phenomenon. Not so long ago, it was easy to find GOP officials and conservative intellectuals who supported the mandate, and not simply because they thought it was the smart thing to do. They also thought it was the right thing to do. In fact, they were the ones who first put the idea on the political agenda. (Jonathan Cohn, 11/25) DHNR is a daily compilation of news stories from GCHP’s Communications Department. Certain news organizations are protected via a paywall requiring the purchase of a subscription to view their content. CALIFORNIA WATCH NOVEMBER 28, 2017 California Healthline: Putting Money Where its Mouthpiece is: Calif. Outspends U.S. to Market Obamacare The marketing blitz is on. Californians are getting barraged with online pop-up ads, radio spots and television commercials, all aimed at persuading them to sign up for Affordable Care Act health plans during this year’s open-enrollment season. (Ibarra and Heredia Rodriguez, 11/28) Kaiser Health News: Heated and Deep-Pocketed Battle Erupts over 340B Drug Discount Program A 25-year-old federal drug discount program has grown so big and controversial that it faces a fight for survival as federal officials and lawmakers furiously debate the program’s reach. The program, known as 340B, requires pharmaceutical companies to give steep discounts to hospitals and clinics that serve high volumes of low-income patients. (Tribble, 11/28) Ventura County Star: Gold Coast Health Plan: National Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month: Offering support Debilitating. Frightening. Demoralizing. That is Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative and ultimately fatal brain disease, and the most common cause of dementia, affecting one in 10 people age 65 and older. An estimated 5.5 million Americans of all ages have Alzheimer's, reports the Alzheimer’s Association. Most are 65 and older, with 200,000 under 65, and almost two-thirds are women. (Nelson, 11/27) Los Angeles Times: San Diego's Hepatitis A Update: Case Count Climbs, but Death Total Holds at 20 Though they continue to see fewer cases and no new deaths have been reported since Oct. 31, San Diego County supervisors on Monday chose to continue the local health emergency status for the region’s ongoing hepatitis A outbreak. Supervisor Ron Roberts noted that, while he considered the latest hepatitis A report from the county Health and Human Services Agency good news, the emergency won't be truly over until new-case rates shrink further. (Sisson, 11/27) CAPITOL HILL WATCH The Hill: Lawmakers Making Progress in Talks on Children's Health Care Congressional negotiators are making progress towards a bipartisan deal to reauthorize children’s health insurance and several other important health-care programs, sources say. Staff from the relevant committees in both parties and chambers met over the Thanksgiving break and are getting closer to an agreement, according to lobbyists and aides.