Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
This policy brief provides the answer. One interesting finding is how the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate may put a bind on poor, legal immigrants. “Legal immigrants with less than five years of legal permanent residency will face the same requirement as native born U.S. citizens to have health insurance coverage. However, legal immigrants…
How can we improve health care? The California Task Force on Affordable Care gives its top 10 recommendations in this report. The report’s slogan is “ten ways Californians can save over $300 billion.” These recommendations include: Implement bundled payments Hold hospitals accountable for progress in reducing utilization in targeted areas such as imaging Directly act…
The county government is often the place of last resort for the medically indigent in California. Some counties run hospitals and/or clinics to care for these individuals outside of the Medicaid system. Other counties operate their own HMO to cover Medicaid patients. As I previously described, there are three types of private Medi-Cal HMO systems…
The California HealthCare Foundation has an almanac entry on Children’s Health Coverage Facts and Figures. Eligibility requirements for these programs is described in this table. Other key findings include: The proportion of children without health insurance continued to decline through 2007, though the pace of improvement has slowed. Nearly 80 percent of California’s uninsured children…
The California Healthcare Foundation looks at the latest health insurance trends in the nation’s most populous state. In California, like in many states, there is a blurring line between what defines an HMO compared to other forms of health insurance. Almost all insurance carriers now offer “a broad array of products, some of which do not…
California is known for beautiful beaches, Hollywood, and sublime parks. In this post, however, I will discuss two other things for which California has recently become famous. Marijuana. Here in California, medical marijuana is legal. Based on my unscientific of pedestrians on a variety of U.S. regions, northern California also has the most lax…
In her California Healthcare Foundation report, Katherine Wilson does a nice job describing the health insurance market in California. A little over health of individuals received health care from their employer or themselves (56%), a quarter of individuals receive health insurance through public programs, and 19% of Californians are uninsured (see chart). The private health…
The San Diego Union Tribune has an article (“Cross-border coverage“) profiling entreprenuer Jim Arriola and his low cost health insurance plan covering medical care in both the U.S. and Mexico. His company, Sekure Healthcare, provides a limited-benefit insurance program through employers along with a discount health card program. Both can be used by Sekure members…
On Monday, the California Assembly passed a bill that mandates health insurance for all California’s citizens. The government will provide subsidies households with incomes below 250 percent of the federal poverty level. Those earning between 250 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level [FPL] would be able to deduct premium costs that exceed…