CMA Press Clips
Daily reports on health care policy and medicine from newspapers and magazines throughout California and around the nation.
Healthcare law has more doctors teaming up
Los Angeles Times - 7/28/10 - As Congress debated the healthcare bill, many critics lamented it would do little to transform a system in which doctors and hospitals bounce patients around in an uncoordinated, costly, sometimes tragic process. But something unexpected has happened since President Obama signed the legislation in March. Spurred in part by the law, many independent providers across the country are racing to mold themselves into the kind of coordinated teams held up as models for improving care.
Merced County rallies doctors in whooping cough fight
Merced Sun-Star - 7/28/10 - Because of the severity of the whooping cough epidemic in California, the state now recommends that anyone over the age of 7 be immunized for the disease.
Plummeting cigarette sales cut California tax revenues
Sacramento Bee - 7/28/10 - Cigarette sales in California plunged to their lowest level in a decade last year as smokers were squeezed by new taxes and restrictions on where they could light up.
Cuts loom for L.A. County health programs
Los Angeles Times - 7/28/10 - With a federal waiver worth $150 million expiring next month, and hundreds of millions more in state and federal funds in limbo, Los Angeles County's top health officials said Tuesday that they soon may have to begin layoffs and slash the number of patients served by a third to 58%.
Feeling little heat, California leaders drag out budget battle
Sacramento Bee - 7/28/10 - Exactly one year ago today, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a state budget package after nearly a month of IOUs and serious closed-door, cigar-fueled negotiations.
Census data reveal broad differences among states in rates of uninsured
Washington Post - 7/28/10 - New census data released Tuesday confirm a huge spread in the rate of uninsured from state to state and the big difference in impact that can be expected as a result of the health-care overhaul recently passed by Congress.
Impact Of Childhood Obesity Goes Beyond Health
National Public Radio - 7/28/10 - The health effects of being overweight or obese are well documented. Extra pounds add extra risk for diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers, even among children. But new research also documents significant social and economic consequences of being overweight since high school.
Study finds gaps in heart failure care given to thousands
USA Today - 7/28/10 - Researchers have identified gaps in the quality of heart failure care provided to thousands of patients by cardiologists who don't always follow treatment guidelines.
Texas Battles Health Law Even as It Follows It
New York Times - 7/28/10 - There are more uninsured residents of Texas — 6.1 million and counting — than there are people in 33 states. The state’s elected officials might be expected, therefore, to cheer a federal health care law that is likely to deliver billions of dollars from Washington to Austin and cover millions of low-income Texans. Instead, the Republican political leadership has greeted the law and its anticipated costs with open hostility, leaving policy makers to move forward with a complex set of changes even as the governor, attorney general and ranking legislators rage against it.
Opinion: The ER myth
USA Today - 7/28/10 - One of the major myths attached to the new health reform law is that it will lead to fewer emergency room visits. Instead of having to go to the ER, the claim goes, more efficient care will be administered to the newly insured in doctors offices by primary care physicians like me.
