Blogs

There's no stopping the health transparency revolution

By David Westphal | May 10, 2013

The transparency movement in health care looks unstoppable now.

The latest exhibit was a big one -- Wednesday’s release of national hospital data showing prices for 100 common procedures.  The wildly different numbers were stunning.

In one often-quoted example, the average charge for a joint replacement in a hospital not far from our center ($223,000) was 40 times that of a hospital in rural Oklahoma ($5,300).  Medicare, which released the data, said this and other extreme differences in price made no sense, and were worthy of consumers’ attention.

Black infant mortality: An international perspective

By John Gonzales | May 7, 2013

In December, I wrote a series of articles with the San Francisco Chronicle that amounted to a tale of two counties in the fight against African American infant mortality.

African American infant mortality rates have been exponentially higher than that of the general population for decades. Traditional education efforts and increased attention to prenatal care have resulted in only incremental improvements.

But Alameda County, with an aggressive, community-based approach to the problem, has made promising gains in reducing the black infant death rate.

Small businesses still largely confused about Obamacare

By Kelley Weiss | May 2, 2013

With less than a year to go before the full rollout of Obamacare, many business owners are still scratching their heads over what it will mean for them.

In fact, most still wrongly believe they’ll have to offer health insurance to their employees, according to a recent eHealth survey.

Health reform's debut could be 'a mess'

By David Westphal | April 24, 2013

The signals coming out of Sacramento are uniformly bullish about state government’s ability to fully implement Obamacare over the next nine months.

California officials say they’ll hit their Oct. 1 deadline for unveiling the new website from which uninsured residents can buy federally subsidized health policies.  And they predict a successful launch on Jan. 1, 2014, of the subsidy program, Covered California, as well as a greatly expanded Medi-Cal program.

“Come January 2014, Covered California will be open for business providing subsidies for millions of Californians,” said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California.

Federal officials are similarly upbeat about their ability to launch health reform in states across the country.

Mental illness and Nevada

By Richard Kipling | April 18, 2013

Mental illness continues to haunt our society. I’m reminded of that by a fine piece of investigative reporting that appeared in The Sacramento Bee this week. What The Bee’s reporters uncovered is a telling illustration of how little we’ve progressed in our attitudes toward people with mental illness. More about that in a minute.

Last year, the Center explored that place where mental illness and government responsibility meet through the lens of state funding cuts to mental health services.

A Modesto Bee reporter joined with two of ours to chronicle, up close and personal, the havoc wrought by severe cuts in county health services.

499,000 Californians -- and counting -- on “Bridge to Reform”

By John Gonzales | April 16, 2013

For nearly three years, I’ve monitored the construction of a pre-cursor to health reform’s sprawling Medicaid expansion.

An early story of mine focused on Kern County’s challenges to implement the then-new program in rural corners of the Central Valley. Another exposed Orange County’s quiet implementation of the program despite political bluster against health reform.

California Medical Association grapples with onset of huge change in medical care

By Richard Kipling | March 27, 2013

 The California Medical Association is no wallflower in the conversation about the state’s health reform future. A power in the halls of the Legislature for decades, the CMA certainly doesn’t plan to sit out the important discussions now taking place in Sacramento about the shape of Obamacare in California.

As one of several blogs I’ll be penning on the players in California health reform, I talked recently to Dustin Corcoran, the association’s CEO, about the CMA’s role.

Without hesitation, he pointed to “change” as the organization’s biggest issue. How does the organization help its members grapple with “the rapidity of change that is coming at physicians, and helping them through the most significant change in decades – at least since Medicare.”

Immediately bench athletes with concussion signs

By Kelley Weiss | March 25, 2013

New recommendations from the American Academy of Neurologists add to the swell of research and attention being paid to concussions in youth athletes. 

Born again after trying to end it all

By Lauren M. Whaley | March 14, 2013

Listen to Martina Castillo's story in her own words.

The next big trend: slower health cost inflation?

By David Westphal | March 7, 2013

One of the nation’s most fortuitous developments of the last two decades has been the sharp and prolonged drop in violent crime. 

Since 1990, the violent crime index in the United States has dropped nearly by half.  In some places, the decline has been even steeper: In New York City, for example, the number of murders has fallen by an astonishing 80 percent.

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