State's health insurance exchange gets $674-million federal grant

Los Angeles Times

Federal officials awarded California's new health insurance exchange a $674-million grant, providing money for a crucial marketing campaign aimed at millions of uninsured consumers. The state-run insurance exchange, Covered California, is seeking to fundamentally reshape the health insurance market by negotiating with insurers for the best rates and helping consumers choose a plan.

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California Endowment pledges $225M to federal health reform

Sacramento Business Journal

The California Endowment has pledged a special allocation of $225 million over four years to support successful implementation of federal health reform in the state. The idea is to build upon the foundation’s 10-year Building Healthy Communities plan to promote prevention and improved health in underserved communities across California.

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Medicaid Expansion Could Boost States' Mental Health Funding

California Healthline

Some mental health advocates say that the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act could provide cash-strapped states with federal funding needed to replenish state-based mental health systems, Stateline/Kaiser Health News reports.

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Editorial: Gov. Brown says deficit is done

Orange County Register

A buoyant Gov. Jerry Brown appeared Tuesday on "PBS NewsHour" to tout California's recovery and prospects. Say what you will about his politics, but from the time he first became governor in 1975, Mr. Brown always has been a good salesman for the more effusive elements of the state.

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Military suicides shouldn't be merely another war tragedy

Arizona Daily Star

The following editorial appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram: If every single day one U.S. soldier after another were being shot dead while deployed overseas, surely the American people wouldn't stand for it. The situation is worse than that. Unofficial Pentagon figures, reported first by The Associated Press, show that 349 active-duty service members took their own lives in 2012.

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Penn researchers use MRI to study drug addiction

Philly.com

MATTHEW ELLIS started popping painkillers as a teenager and switched to heroin a few years later. It was simple economics, and a common progression among today's opiate addicts - the recreational drug dabbler turned full-time junkie. That's usually when the nightmare takes hold. You start living life one injection at a time. Everything else - career, family, self-respect - is prioritized behind the next little wax-paper bag of dope.

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Narconon claims no liability in death of Norcross rehab patient

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Attorneys for Narconon International and its Georgia affiliate argued Thursday they were not liable for the 2008 drug overdose of Patrick Desmond, then a patient at the Norcross rehabilitation facility.

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Children and siblings of deployed military more likely to use drugs

Medical Xpress

Youth with a deployed military parent or sibling use drugs and alcohol at a higher rate than their peers, finds a new study in American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The team of researchers used data from more than 14,000 responses from the 2011 California Healthy Kids Survey that asked youth in grades 5–11 questions including whether they had either a parent or sibling in the military and the number of deployments they had served. They were also asked about lifetime or recent (past 30 days) use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, prescription drugs, and other drugs (inhalants, cocaine/crack, methamphetamine).

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Prescription Drug Overdoses In LA Growing Public Health Concern: Report

Huffington Post: Los Angeles

Prescription drug overdoses account for thousands of Los Angeles emergency room visits, according the LA County Department of Public Health. In 2009, there were 5,382 emergency room visits and 3,048 hospitalizations for prescription drug overdose, according to a report released by the department Monday. "This is a very serious problem," Dr. Jonathan Fielding, director of the department, told The Huffington Post. "It's reached the level that it is purely a broad public health concern."

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California Medical Marijuana Heads To State Supreme Court: City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patients Health and Wellness Center

Huffington Post: San Francisco

A case headed for the California Supreme Court early next month is expected to have a big impact on the future of medical marijuana in the Golden State. The City of Riverside v. Inland Empire Patients Health and Wellness Center, which will be heard at the University of San Francisco's School of Law, is looking at cities' ability to implement bans on medical marijuana clinics operating within their limits.

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Prescription meds an issue at open houses

San Diego Union-Tribune

Before an open house, a real estate agent's to-do list may include a thorough cleaning of the home, clutter removal and stowing valuables in a safe. But rarely do agents think about advising sellers to stow away prescription medications in a secure place and out of the hands of potential pill pilferers, say officials from two health education non-profit groups in San Diego County.

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Problem gambling helpline calls up almost 7%

Green Bay Press Gazette

Leaders of the Wisconsin Council on Problem Gambling say a challenging economy is partly to blame for an almost 7 percent increase in calls to its helpline last year. The Green Bay-based helpline answered 14,464 calls and emails in 2012, compared with 13,528 in 2011, the council’s annual report shows. The increase in calls is consistent with national trends, said Keith Whyte, the executive director for the National Council on Problem Gambling. The national helpline handled more than 300,000 calls last year, which was about 12,000 more than 2011, Whyte said.

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A crucial time for Medi-Cal

Los Angeles Times

Gov. Jerry Brown has thrown his support behind expanding Medi-Cal, the health insurance program for impoverished Californians, to the full extent authorized by the 2010 federal healthcare reform law. It was the right choice, and Brown deserves credit for recognizing that the benefits to public health and the economy outweigh the potential costs. But his budget proposal left state lawmakers to decide whether to keep responsibility for the expanded program in Sacramento or hand it off to the counties. And while it's worth reevaluating how to pay for the medically indigent, it would be a disaster to transfer so much of Medi-Cal's duties to ill-prepared local authorities.

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Analysis: ACA's Medicaid Expansion Likely To Be Unevenly Implemented

California Healthline

Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act is likely to be unevenly implemented, creating substantial gaps in coverage once the law takes full effect in January 2014, according to an analysis published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, Reuters reports. For the analysis, researchers examined governors' positions as they entered the last legislative session before the ACA takes full effect.

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How Will Covered California Service Centers Work?

California Healthline

Service centers -- the places where California consumers will be directed  through an 800 phone number and a web portal to get answers to their exchange and eligibility questions  -- are on the agenda at today's meeting of the Health Benefit Exchange board. Betsy Imholz, director of the West Coast office of Consumers Union, hopes her questions about service centers will be answered at today's meeting.

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Assembly Hearing Addresses Issues of Risk

California Healthline

It was not your usual subject for an Assembly hearing in the Capitol Building. Yesterday's hearing convened by the Assembly Committee on Health took on the arcane and important subject of adverse selection and risk pools. The nerdy-tech tone of the hearing was not lost on its participants. "I have to applaud the committee -- for taking on such a dry topic," said David Panush, director of government relations for Covered California, the state's health exchange. "But it is so important. I'm really glad to see it."

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Tehama County opts for local control of medical services

Red Bluff Daily News

Tehama County joined with seven other Northern California counties Tuesday in expressing its desire to maintain local control when the state changes the way rural Medi-Cal recipients receive their health services June 1. As part of Gov. Jerry Brown's budget the 28 rural counties who operate under a fee-for-service health care delivery system will switch to a managed care system, more similar to commercial HMOs.

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California Budget Hurt by Facebook's Stock-Price Slump .

Wall Street Journal

Facebook Inc.'s disappointing IPO has claimed another victim: California's budget. Aides to Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown last week lowered their estimate of how much revenue the state will get from Facebook's initial public offering by nearly one-third, to $1.3 billion in the three years ending in June 2014, down from $1.9 billion. The change, included in Mr. Brown's proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, resulted from "lower than expected share prices" after Facebook's May IPO, which occurred just weeks after the state had issued its earlier estimate.

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Steinberg: Retiree health, CalSTRS need attention this year

Sacramento Bee

During a meeting with the Capitol press corps today, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said lawmakers need to look at the cost of retiree health benefits and stabilizing the state teachers' retirement system. The Sacramento Democrat said he doesn't anticipate any moves towards a hybrid-style retirement system for the state's public employees this year.

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State audit rips California utilities commission for fund errors

Sacramento Bee

In a scathing new review of the California Public Utilities Commission, the Department of Finance found widespread budget errors and inaccurate fiscal predictions of various fees that state consumers pay each month.

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Prescription Drug Abuse Rising in LA County

NBC Universal

Overdoses of prescription drugs account for more emergency room visits than any other cause in Los Angeles County, the county’s top public health official said in a report released Monday. The number of people checking into publicly funded drug rehabilitation programs for abuse of prescription pain relievers doubled during a five-year-period examined by epidemiologists, and more than 60 percent of drug-related deaths in the county last year were due to prescription medications.

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Steinberg Seeks To Boost Board's Oversight of Risky Prescribing Habits

California HealthlineSenate President Pro Tempore Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) has said that he will support legislation that would give the Medical Board of California more investigators and more authority to stop physicians who overprescribe medications, the Los Angeles Times reports.  Steinberg said he is acting in response to an investigation by the Times on the role that physicians and pharmacists play in prescription drug-related deaths in the state.

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California Tries to Guide the Way on Health Law

The New York Times

The meeting came to order, the five members of the California Health Benefit Exchange seated onstage with dozens of consumer advocates and others looking on. On the agenda: what to name the online marketplace where millions of residents will be able to shop for medical coverage under President Obama’s health care law.   An adviser presented the options, meant to be memorable, appealing and clear. What about CaliHealth? Or Healthifornia?  Or Avocado?   “I am kind of drawn to Avocado,” declared Kim Belshé, a member of the exchange’s board of directors, which is hustling to make dozens of decisions as the clock ticks toward deadlines set by the law.

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Analyst calls Brown's budget 'reasonable' but has some concerns

Los Angeles Times

Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal may be too optimistic, but California's finances still have shown dramatic improvement, the Legislature's top financial advisor said Monday. Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said the state is likely to generate $2.1 billion less in revenue and savings than the governor is counting on. But after years of catastrophic deficits, that's a relatively small gap in an estimated $97.7-billion proposal, he said.

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States Will Be Given Extra Time to Set Up Health Insurance Exchanges

The New York Times

The White House says it will give states more time to comply with the new health care law after finding that many states lag in setting up markets where millions of Americans are expected to buy subsidized private health insurance.   Under the law, the secretary of health and human services was supposed to determine “on or before Jan. 1, 2013,” whether states were prepared to operate the online markets, known as insurance exchanges.  But the secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, working with the White House, said she would waive or extend the deadline for any states that expressed interest in creating their own exchanges or regulating insurance sold through a federal exchange.

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Doctors Often Miss Signs of Problem Drinking in Patients, Study Finds

US News

Doctors fail to diagnose most patients with alcohol problems when they rely solely on their suspicions, rather than using proven screening methods, a new study finds. Researchers looked at almost 1,700 patients, and found that about 14 percent screened positive for hazardous or harmful drinking. Primary care doctors had suspected hazardous or harmful drinking in just 5 percent of the patients, however. And of those patients, less than two-thirds actually screened positive for a drinking problem.

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Kelly to announce measures to tackle prescription drug problem in NYC

New York Post

The NYPD will start tackling prescription drug abuse with GPS tracked prescription bottles. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly will unveil a four part process to combating prescription drug abuse in New York City when he speaks at the Clinton Health Matters Conference later today in California. “We’re also distributing so-called ‘bait bottles’ containing placebo Oxycodone pills to be placed on pharmacy shelves,” Kelly said according to planned remarks. These bottles will be equipped with a GPS tracking device that the police can use to follow the bottle and possibly locate “stash locations.”

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Link between smoking marijuana and IQ drop challenged

Associated Press

A new analysis is challenging a report that suggests regular marijuana smoking during the teen years can lead to a long-term drop in IQ. The analysis says the statistical analysis behind that conclusion is flawed. The original study, reported last August, included more than 1,000 people who'd been born in the town of Dunedin, New Zealand. Their IQ was tested at ages 13 and 38, and they were asked about marijuana use periodically between those ages.

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In California, It’s U.S. vs. State Over Marijuana

New York Times

Matthew R. Davies graduated from college with a master’s degree in business and a taste for enterprise, working in real estate, restaurants and mobile home parks before seizing on what he saw as uncharted territory with a vast potential for profits — medical marijuana. He brought graduate-level business skills to a world decidedly operating in the shadows. He hired accountants, compliance lawyers, managers, a staff of 75 and a payroll firm. He paid California sales tax and filed for state and local business permits.

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Legislator vows action on reckless prescribing of addictive pills

Los Angeles Times

The leader of the California Senate says holes in the state's oversight of physicians, exposed in recent Los Angeles Times articles about prescription drug deaths, are "extremely troubling" and need to be corrected "as quickly as we can." Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said he would put his political muscle behind legislation to give the Medical Board of California more investigators and broader authority to stop reckless prescribing of addictive medications.

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Wary of cost, Brown commits state to health reform

San Jose Mercury News

Gov. Jerry Brown says he's firmly committed to making national health care reform work in California, but he also is wary of potential costs that could affect state spending for years to come. In releasing his budget for the coming fiscal year last week, Brown pledged to be a reliable partner in implementing the federal Affordable Care Act by expanding Medicaid coverage for low-income Californians.

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California's debt still a heavy cloud over state's future

Los Angeles Times

Gov. Jerry Brown proclaimed last week that California, which now has enough cash to pay its day-to-day bills, can no longer be described by naysayers as a "failed state." But even though it appears to be free of the deficit that dogged the Capitol in recent years, the state is no model of financial health.

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Brown takes a page from Aristotle

Los Angeles Times

Robbing Peter in the suburbs to pay Paul in the inner city seems politically perilous. Even unjust. Particularly after we just soaked the rich to balance the state budget and keep public schools afloat. I mean, how much income redistribution are Californians in the mood for? In this new scheme of Gov. Jerry Brown's, it isn't only the rich getting robbed. It's the middle class.

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Brown's billion-dollar budget trick

San Francisco Chronicle

If you've ever wondered how to make a billion dollars vanish, see Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal. For the first time in a long time, California is looking at a budget that doesn't require deep spending cuts and that doesn't have a deficit.  We found a convenient budget trick that helped make this possible.

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Analyst to assess Brown's Calif. spending plan

Fresno Bee

The Legislature's nonpartisan budget analyst will offer its assessment on Monday of Gov. Jerry Brown's budget proposal, which projected ongoing surpluses in California for the first time in more than a decade. In releasing his spending plan last week, the Democratic governor said California is emerging from an era of massive deficits and projected a $1 billion reserve in the $97.6 billion general fund for the 2013-2014 fiscal year. Just two months earlier, the Legislative Analyst's Office had projected a more cautious outlook that forecast a $1.9 billion deficit.

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FDA Approves Painkiller Obama Administration Warned About in December

US News

Less than a month after the White House warned of a potential influx of painkillers from Canada that government officials say are easier for addicts to abuse, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a similar pill for distribution nationwide.

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