CMA Press Clips
Daily reports on health care policy and medicine from newspapers and magazines throughout California and around the nation.
Medical spending definition at issue
Sacramento Bee - 8/14/10 - Consumer advocates and hundreds of representatives from the health insurance industry are heading to Seattle this weekend to influence how a key part of the national health care overhaul is enforced.
Mental patients swamp unprepared ERs in Sacramento County
Sacramento Bee - 8/15/10 - With fewer places to turn, mental health patients are overwhelming Sacramento County emergency rooms - increasing wait times, straining law enforcement and exposing the limited ability of ERs to deal with serious mental disorders.
California, others to get more clout vs. insurers
Contra Costa Times - 8/16/10 - As Americans struggle with double-digit increases in their health insurance bills, millions are coming up against a hard reality: The state regulators who are supposed to protect them can often do little to control what insurers are charging.
Some States Are Lacking in Health Law Authority
New York Times - 8/16/10 - Faced with the need to review insurance rates and enforce a panoply of new rights granted to consumers, states are scrambling to make sure they have the necessary legal authority to carry out the responsibilities being placed on them by President Obama’s health care law.
UCSF study finds racial gaps in child obesity
San Francisco Chronicle - 8/16/10 - For the first time in more than three decades, obesity rates for white and Asian children are falling in California, and they seem to have leveled off for Hispanic kids - all good signs that public health campaigns aimed at keeping young people away from unhealthful sweets and fatty foods are starting to work, according to a UCSF study.
'Challenging' primary care has challenges of its own
USA Today - 8/16/10 - Michael Ragain recalls a professor's response when, as a medical school student, he mentioned that he wanted to become a family practice doctor. "You're too smart to go into family medicine," the professor told him. "Can't you do something else?"
Innovative health programs counter primary care shortage
USA Today - 8/16/10 - About 65 million Americans live in communities with a shortage of primary care doctors, physicians trained to meet the majority of patients' health care needs over the course of their lives.
L.A. County releases report detailing Health Department malpractice
The Daily News - 8/14/10 - The amount of money Los Angeles County paid to settle medical malpractice lawsuits shot up by 50 percent in two years, even though the number of total cases has dropped significantly, according to a report released Friday.
Democrats hope Medicare checks in the mail help
Associated Press - 8/15/10 - A check from Uncle Sam gets your attention, even if the money doesn't help that much with the bills. More than 750,000 Medicare recipients with high prescription costs each got a $250 government check this summer, and 3 million-plus more checks are going out to people who land in the program's anxiety-inducing coverage gap.
Lungren facing strong challenge
San Francisco Chronicle - 8/14/10 - Republican challengers with little political experience are lashing out at Democrats and liberal leaders of Congress this year, but in California's Third Congressional District, a Democrat is turning the tables and tapping into that anti-incumbent sentiment in his run against Republican Rep. Dan Lungren. Ami Bera, 45, a doctor from Elk Grove (Sacramento County) and the son of immigrants from India, has said that the three-term incumbent, a former state attorney general and Long Beach congressman, is no longer interested in serving his constituents and just wants another term in office.
Editorial: Wrong way on health care
Washington Post - 8/16/10 - One of the most promising aspects of the new health-care reform is the creation of an independent board to recommend changes in federal health programs and a fast-track provision that would allow these changes to take effect automatically unless Congress comes up with alternatives that would save a similar amount.
