Impact Projects
Santa Cruz’s Healthy Kids program was wildly successful until 2009, when the battered economy threatened its funding. Like 28 other programs in California, the county’s Healthy Kids program was lauded for providing health coverage for virtually every poor child who was not otherwise insured, regardless of immigration status. By early 2010, however, the program had reached a crossroads: it was forced to freeze enrollment and faced financial struggle.
The foreclosure of a home is more than a financial transaction. It also is a hidden human drama. Merced County ranked first in California for foreclosure filings in 2009, and sixth among counties nationwide. With one in seven county homes foreclosed on since September 2006, we examine the psychological problems, including anxiety, sleeplessness and depression, wreaked by the local foreclosure crisis, which shows no sign of abating.
Health reform will have its largest impact in California four years from now. But in the wake of historic passage by Congress, the health overhaul will have multiple immediate effects. Here’s a look. (Also published in the Merced Sun-Star, the Modesto Bee, the Sacramento Bee and the San Luis Obispo Tribune).
The nation’s 75 million baby boomers, it turns out, are not immune from the crisis in health care. Economic problems are hitting many Ventura County middle-class baby boomers with loss of jobs and health insurance, and the safety net they paid into during better times was not designed to help them. Uninsured patients ages 45-64 nearly doubled at county hospitals and clinics between 2005 and 2009.
In the winter, Butte County suffers from a number of bad air quality days that have serious health consequences for the elderly and those with respiratory conditions. We examine the politics and science behind the debate over whether wood stove-generated smoke pollution constitutes a threat to residents’ health. In a county with a long history of heavy dependence on stoves as a source of heat and a bountiful supply of inexpensive wood, this is a heated question.
Health reform will offer special incentives to small businesses who continue coverage for their employees – tax cuts covering up to 35 percent of their costs. But that’s of little consolation to many business owners, many of whom are getting rate increases that exceed the tax credits. Some think it’s fishy. (Also published in the Ventura County Star).
There is hope at last for tens of thousands of Californians unable to get health coverage because of pre-existing conditions. The state is establishing a new high-risk pool with more than $750 million in federal money to widen coverage. The new program is a bridge to 2014, when denials of coverage based on pre-existing conditions will be banned.
What are prospects for bringing a medical school to the University of California’s newest and smallest campus, and to a valley population of 3 million burdened by poverty and lack of access to care? We survey politicians, university officials, representatives of the valley business community, health care workers and farm workers to look at the implications such a school would have on valley health, as well as the impediments the proposal faces.
In the past two years, many of Santa Cruz County’s elderly and disabled patients have been shut out from a primary care system that has no room for them. Fed up with the low reimbursement rates paid by the federal insurance program for the elderly and disabled, many Santa Cruz County-based doctors have refused to accept new Medicare patients. The series investigates the breakdown in care and the prospects for fixing it.
The smoke inhalation from long-burning forest fires in northern California extracts a huge, frightening toll on residents’ respiratory health. We measure the ill effects and suggest potential remedies.
Featured Radio Story
Scheduling Baby's Birthday.
The Madeleine Brand Show, Southern California Public Radio.
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