Coalition working on ballot measure to limit prescription drug abuse

Los Angeles Times

Fearing lawmakers may fail to pass a package of medical reform bills, a coalition of consumer groups and trial lawyers is mounting a campaign to put before voters an even more ambitious slate of initiatives aimed at curbing prescription drug abuse and holding doctors more accountable for misconduct.

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Treatment Facility has no License

TMZ.com

The treatment facility Lindsay Lohan is currently at has NO LICENSE to provide rehab treatment because its license was REVOKED ... TMZ has learned. TMZ broke the story ... Lindsay has entered Morningside Recovery in Newport Beach ... even though prosecutors never signed off on the facility. The judge is giving prosecutors a week to investigate the facility, and here's the first thing they'll find.

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Medicaid has mixed record on improving health for poor, study says

Los Angeles Times

As state leaders debate whether to expand their Medicaid programs next year under President Obama’s healthcare law, new research suggests the government insurance plan for the poor has only a mixed record of improving health. Medicaid beneficiaries are less likely than the uninsured to have catastrophic medical expenses and significantly less likely to suffer from depression, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found.

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Obamacare: How to switch plans, get kids coverage

San Jose Mercury News

How does the Affordable Care Act affect children in low-income families and people who want to buy coverage on the new state insurance exchanges? Below find some answers to questions that were posed by readers. Q: I am the breadwinner for a family of five, including my wife and three kids. The insurance for me is cheap, but for the entire family it's prohibitively expensive. I'd like to know if the health-reform law is doing anything for the kids of families — like mine — that earn less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

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Reform May Improve Access to Pediatric Specialties

California Healthline

Children with special health care needs in Los Angeles County should not be treated as "small adults," according to pediatric specialists who see health care reform as a golden opportunity to design tailored systems of care for children with complex, chronic and rare health conditions.

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Measure To Reverse Medi-Cal Pay Cut Advances

KPBS

Momentum is building in the state legislature to reverse a looming 10 percent cut in the rate Medi-Cal pays doctors and hospitals. The pay cut is scheduled to take effect on June 1st. Lawmakers originally approved the cut two years ago when the state was in financial trouble.

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Huntington Beach detox facility in question over man's death

ABC 7

One year ago, Jason Redmer passed away and not a day goes by that his mother, Lynne, doesn't ask the question, "Why?" "He had a deep heart and he just loved life," the Orange County resident recalls. But behind his big smile was a decade long struggle with alcohol. "Whiskey is what he normally would drink," she said. "He said when he would go on trips and vacations he would take lots of pictures because he wouldn't remember the vacations." Redmer's family said he tried several times to get sober, only to relapse. After a work injury in 2010, his mother said he also became addicted to pain killers. "It was horrible because he was trying. He was trying so hard," the grieving mother said.

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