Health, Doctors and Common Sense

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger again gave a rare Republican stamp of approval for federal health care reform Thursday, and said California will prepare to enact its sweeping changes.

“I’m not a party servant, I’m a public servant,” Schwarzenegger said to applause from doctors and others at the University of California, Davis, Cancer Center in Sacramento.

Schwarzenegger, who tried unsuccessfully to expand health insurance markets in the state, had supported President Barack Obama’s general efforts at health insurance changes.

But he also criticized the resulting bill that emerged from Congress, protesting that it was a “rip-off” for California and rewarded Nebraska – whose Democratic senator, Ben Nelson, had waffled on his support – with more Medicaid money than other states.

On Thursday, though, Schwarzenegger said he was ready to move ahead. The state, he said, will expand its high-risk pool insurance program – which currently covers about 7,000 people – using $761 million in federal funds California has allocated.

The governor also said he backs developing a state-managed exchange to give small businesses and individuals more options to purchase affordable insurance.

Schwarzenegger sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius pledging he will enforce new federal rules, including one allowing children to remain on policies until they are 26 years old.

Sebelius issued a statement in response, saying that “the governor deserves credit for his proactive work to help improve public health and prevent disease and illness.”

Eighteen states have objected to the bill as costly and an overreaching of federal authority, and filed suit.

The top GOP contenders to become California’s next governor, Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, have both said they would work to repeal the health plan and replace it.

Schwarzenegger, who had national health insurance in his native Austria, compared some opposition to the plan to fears about Social Security that didn’t materialize.

“There are aspects of this bill that I don’t like,” Schwarzenegger said.

But he said “the federal government was sensitive about the ramp-up time,” which extends seven years.

State estimates are that the plan could eventually cost California $2 billion to $3 billion more a year, largely because of more Medicaid enrollment. But the first waves of insurance expansion are fully federally funded.

“When you don’t have health insurance and you go to a hospital, you are forcing other people to pay for your medical care,” Schwarzenegger said. “This is why I feel that the federal government has the right to force you to have a health care plan and to force you to pay for your own health care.”

Editor’s Note: This story has been changed from the print version to clarify that Schwarzenegger alone sent the letter to Sebelius. Corrected on April 30, 2010.

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The Sacramento City Unified School District will receive a $100,000 grant for a school fitness center after winning the 2010 Governor’s Fitness Challenge.

District Superintendent Jonathan Raymond accepted the award Wednesday from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at a news conference in Los Angeles.

Eight California schools will receive the fitness centers from Coca-Cola Co. after winning the fitness challenge, a contest among state schools to encourage students, parents and teachers to lead active, healthy lives.

Participants register with the program and record the number of days they exercise for at least 30 minutes. Statewide, more than 1 million students signed up to participate in this year’s challenge.

Sacramento City Unified had 40,402 students sign up for the challenge. The district will announce in June which school will receive the fitness center.

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Drexel University has added another academic program to its Center for Graduate Studies in downtown Sacramento.

Beginning in August, the school will offer a certificate in Interdepartmental Medical Science. It is designed for college graduates who want training in health fields so they can apply to medical, dental, optometry, podiatry, chiropractic or other health-related professional schools.

The Sacramento classes will be taught by faculty of Drexel’s medical school in Philadelphia through streaming video and a video-conferencing system. Drexel will sponsor an information session on the Interdepartmental Medical Sciences Program at noon Friday at One Capitol Mall, second floor.

For more information on Drexel’s Sacramento Center for Graduate Studies, go to www.drexel.edu/sacramento or call (888) 389-3781 or (916) 325-4600.

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A student team that includes a UC Davis graduate student has won a national technology competition for inventing cell-phone software that will help people in developing countries identify vascular diseases in children.

Wilson To, 24, who is pursuing a master’s degree at the UC Davis veterinary school, and the two UC San Diego students on his team are taking their invention to Poland this summer where they will compete for a $25,000 prize with student winners from more than 100 countries.

The Imagine Cup contest, sponsored by Microsoft, asks students to use Microsoft technology to help solve a problem identified by the United Nations – in this case, the health of children in developing countries.

To and his colleagues developed software that runs on smart phones with the Windows Mobile operating system. Their idea was to bring a diagnostic tool to remote communities around the world where many children die from treatable diseases because they have little access to clinics or hospitals.

With phones running the team’s software, a trained person can take a picture or video of a child’s eye and transmit the image to a server that runs tests to determine if the child is likely to have diseases such as diabetes or hypertension. Symptoms of those disorders are visible in close-up pictures of blood vessels in the eye.

After the tests are performed on the images, the software sends a text message back to the phone, allowing the person in the field to make a more detailed diagnosis.

“It’s a means of identifying children who are at risk so they can get further attention,” To said. “Hopefully, that equates to lives being saved.”

To said he hopes that winning the contest will allow him to make his invention more widely available to needy regions. He said some foundations have already expressed interest in promoting it.

Microsoft has been sponsoring the Imagine Cup contest for eight years. Chairman Bill Gates said in a statement that the competition illustrates the potential technology holds to solve some of the world’s most complex problems.

“When I was a student tinkering with the first personal computers, I thought I had a pretty good idea of how PCs could be used,” his statement said. “But in the 35 years since, I’ve never ceased to be amazed at the power of computing to make a difference in so many parts of our lives.”

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Free vaccinations against tetanus, H1N1, hepatitis B, measles and other diseases are being offered by The Effort’s Oak Park Community Health Center throughout the week to mark National Infant Immunization Week.

Shots are not limited to infants, clinic officials said. Free vaccinations are available for all children 17 and younger.

Despite recent gains in infant immunization coverage, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that just 52 percent of children ages 19 to 35 months had received all the recommended vaccinations, according to clinic officials.

The nonprofit health center is at 3415 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. To make an appointment, call (916) 233-4910.

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WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is backing legislation to provide mandatory paid sick leave for more than 30 million additional workers, who are some of the nation’s lowest-paid employees.

The Healthy Families Act, sponsored by Sen. Christopher Dodd and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, both Democrats from Connecticut, would require companies with 15 or more employees to provide one hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked or up to seven sick days a year for a full-time worker.

Most legislative action has come at the state and municipal level. In recent years, California, Ohio, Maine and New Jersey have considered bills requiring paid sick leave. San Francisco and Washington, D.C., have passed laws that require it for private-sector employees.

– McClatchy Newspapers

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The U.S. Department of Justice won’t stand in the way of a long-delayed project aimed at shining more light on California’s rising hospital costs.

That means CalPERS and some of the state’s largest health care purchasers can proceed with plans to launch an extensive study scrutinizing the cost of providing care at more than 300 hospitals statewide.

The California Hospital Association had attempted to block the project, saying it violated federal antitrust laws by potentially releasing proprietary data that could hinder competition within the health care industry.

On Monday, the Justice Department sided with CalPERS, the Pacific Business Group on Health and the California Health Care Coalition, the entities planning to underwrite the Hospital Value Initiative.

Brad Pacheco, a spokesman for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, welcomed the Justice Department’s decision, saying it “reinforced the importance of transparency.”

CalPERS is the country’s second-largest buyer of health care services, spending more than $5.7 billion last year on health benefits for 1.3 million state and local government employees, retirees and their families.

Jan Emerson, a spokeswoman for the California Hospital Association, declined to be interviewed but said in an e-mail that the announcement by the Department of Justice “does not resolve the anti-competitive concerns California hospitals have about this initiative.”

Emerson said the project’s focus on cost was too narrow and said the quality of care should also be taken into account.

Because of the antitrust concerns, the initiative had been in limbo since 2007, pending government review.

In recent years, soaring hospital costs have been under scrutiny by CalPERS and the state’s largest companies.

In 2006, CalPERS joined the Pacific Business Group in commissioning a study that showed the wide variations in hospital costs across the state.

“The overall goal was to help consumers and purchasers understand which hospitals in California are affordable,” said David Lansky, the president and CEO of the Pacific Business Group.

The group includes some of the state’s largest employers, including Chevron, Safeway, Wells Fargo and Walt Disney Co.

Earlier this month, The Bee used the same methodology to produce a special report that showed private insurers paying substantial negotiated “markups” for hospital care – sometimes more than double what it costs hospitals to provide those services.

CalPERS and its partners plan to look at insurance claims data to figure what out it costs each hospital to provide a specific service. The resulting comparisons could be instructive for companies and consumers looking to rein in medical expenses, Lansky said.

“Purchasers need more transparency,” Lansky said. “They really have a right to know.”

In announcing its decision, the Department of Justice said the project “was not likely to produce anticompetitive effects,” as argued by the California Hospital Association.

In fact, improving public access to hospital pricing information could improve competition, the Justice Department said, by “facilitating more informed purchasing decisions by group purchasers of health care services.”

But the government said it reserved the right to challenge the proposal at a later time if it hinders competition.

In its decision, the Justice Department noted that the data included in the information exchange would be at least 10 months old and would not disclose specific pricing data.

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