Embattled board mulls prescription abuse solutions

Los Angeles Times

Under pressure from state lawmakers to reform, the Medical Board of California on Tuesday embarked on a search for a new executive director and considered a host of proposals aimed at combating reckless prescribing by doctors that is contributing to overdose deaths.

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Sebelius Asked Companies to Support Health Care Law

New York Times

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, disclosed on Tuesday that she had made telephone calls to three companies regulated by her department and urged them to help a nonprofit group promote President Obama’s health care law. She identified the companies as Johnson & Johnson, the drug maker; Ascension Health, a large Roman Catholic health care system; and Kaiser Permanente, the health insurance plan.

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Dan Walters: California budget has many holes to fill in 10 days

Sacramento Bee

Anyone who would tune into the Legislature's budget conference committee sessions this week expecting to learn how the 2013-14 budget is shaping up would be disappointed. The committee is going through the budget item by item, at least those items where the Assembly's Democrats and the Senate's Democrats differ, but anything more than slightly controversial is being "left open."

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Study Finds too Many Americans Drink too Much

San Diego Union-Tribune

On any given day in the United States, 18 percent of men and 11 percent of women drink more alcohol than federal guidelines recommend, according to a study that also found that 8 percent of men and 3 percent of women are full-fledged “heavy drinkers.” That means the great majority of Americans stay within the advised limit of two drinks a day for men and one for women, according to the study that appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

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California: Marijuana Seller Takes Plea Deal

New York Times

A medical marijuana store owner whose prosecution by the federal authorities highlighted vast disparities in how California and the Justice Department are responding to the medical marijuana industry abandoned a six-month battle against Washington on Friday and pleaded guilty to 10 charges of marijuana cultivation and distribution.

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California Senate passes bill to curb prescription drug abuse

Los Angeles Times

The state Senate on Thursday unanimously passed the last bill in a broad package of proposed reforms aimed at combating prescription drug abuse and mounting overdose deaths in California. The bills, inspired by a series of investigative stories in The Times, would help authorities track drug abusing patients as well as doctors who overprescribe painkillers and other addictive narcotics. One bill would give the state medical board the power to immediately suspend the prescribing privileges of doctors suspected of putting patients at risk.

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Marijuana regulatory bill stalls in California Legislature (blog)

Sacramento Bee

Lawmakers quashed a bill that would have created a state agency to tax and regulate California's overgrown medical marijuana landscape on Friday. Since California voters gave the green light to medical cannabis in 1996, the state has seen cities and municipalities deal with quasi-legal pot in a variety of different ways, with critics saying many dispensaries serve all comers under the pretense of helping the sick.

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Affordable Care Act's challenge: getting young adults enrolled

Los Angeles Times

Arsine Sargsyan is 23 years old, healthy and uninsured. She chooses to forgo coverage for one simple reason: "I never get sick." Despite her reluctance, Sargsyan is exactly the type of person insurance plans, states and the federal government are counting on to make health reform work.

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California health exchange tops expectations

Modesto Bee

Californians can breathe a sigh of relief over a crucial first step in implementing health care reform. State officials last week unveiled the health plans and premium rates that will be available under the California health exchange. They show the market is working as intended — actually better.

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New insurance market taking shape

HealthyCal.org

California’s new health insurance marketplace is starting to come into focus as a state agency in charge of implementing President Obama’s federal health reform steadily adds more and more detail to the emerging picture, like a painter filling in a vast canvass. But exactly how the final image will look to consumers remains a bit murky. And we probably won’t know the answer until after the health benefits exchange, known as Covered California, opens for business Oct. 1.

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Obamacare's California dreamin'

Politico         

The best news for Obamacare these days is coming out of California — but it’s a best-case scenario that might not work everywhere else in the country. The state surprised many when it announced that there won’t be any big price hikes for the health plans available through its insurance exchange — the marketplace that will serve people who don’t have another place to get health coverage.

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More Children Poisoned By Parents' Prescription Drugs

NPR

Dad takes a cholesterol-lowering statin so he'll be around to see the kids grow up. But statins, like Lipitor and Zocor, as well as some other common adult prescription drugs are causing a rise in poisonings among children, a study says. The big surprise is that children are at risk not just from opioid painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin, which most parents know need to be kept away from kids.

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