Our blogger Karen J. Fletcher is CHA's publications consultant. She provides technical expertise, writing and research on Medicare, health disparities and other health care issues. With a Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley, she serves in health advocacy as a trainer and consultant. See her current articles.
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The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) put together a 5-page fact sheet that answers frequently asked questions (FAQs) about medications that are often not found when researching drug plans on their Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Finder tool.
See: Researching Drugs Fact Sheet (PDF)
Early this morning, the U.S. Senate held a pivotal vote; it successfully gathered the required 60 votes to end the debate and move forward to subsequent votes to pass major health reform from the Senate floor later this week. Both California Senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein joined all 60 Democratic and Independent Senators to vote for the motion; all 40 Republican Senators voted against it.
Next votes are planned for Tuesday and Wednesday, and final passage is planned for Thursday, December 24th.
After passage, the next step is negotiations between the House and Senate to reconcile the Senate bill with the House health reform measure passed in November. Negotiations will most likely go into January with the goal of having a final agreement and final vote in both the House and Senate by the end of January.
See the full text of the bill and the 380+ page “manager’s amendment” (contains several changes that allowed for the passing 60 votes this morning). This link also has a video clip of Senator Reid’s speech right before the 1 a.m. vote this morning.
A Health Access blog article has a good summary of some of changes in the “manager’s amendment.”
Related to a different aspect of the health reform debate, Kaiser Family Foundation recently held a live interview with key advocates in women’s and minority health and released a video on what health reform may mean for women of color.
COBRA subsidies from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed in February 2009 are about to run out for people who started receiving it 9 months ago. Over a million Californians rely on the subsidy to continue their health care coverage, which pays 65% of their monthly COBRA premium.
COBRA, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act passed in 1985, allows involuntarily laid-off workers to continue their health coverage for 18-36 months by assuming the premium payments formerly paid by their employers. These monthly insurance premiums, however, after almost 25 years of health care inflation, are often bigger than unemployment checks.
When the economy went downhill last year, and the unemployment rates skyrocketed, Congress approved this subsidy to help the millions of people who lost their jobs between Sept. 2008 and Dec. 2009 continue their health coverage for the short-term. The first recipients from 9 months ago are now starting to lose their subsidies, and unless Congress extends the program, more subsidies will expire each month through fall of next year.
Also, unless Congress acts, people who loose their jobs in 2010 won’t receive a similar subsidy. Because of the high premium costs, many of these people will most likely become uninsured.
Families USA recently released a report with a state-by-state estimate of the average COBRA premium, average amount covered by the federal subsidy, and the average monthly unemployment check. In California, the average monthly COBRA premium is $1,107, about $720 of which is covered by the federal subsidy. Unemployment compensation amounts to an average of $1,349 a month. This leaves little left over if an unemployed Californian choses COBRA coverage and does NOT receive the federal subsidy.
The federal subsidies (which people may qualify for through Dec. 31, 2009) also apply to people who qualify for Cal-COBRA, California’s “mini-COBRA” program for employees laid off from companies with fewer than 20 workers.
For more information, see the Families USA report, Expiration of COBRA Subsidy (PDF).
For general info, see our sections on COBRA and Cal-COBRA.
More than one million Californians, including adults, children with disabilities, and the elderly, used some type of long-term care (LTC) service in 2007. This number is projected to rise exponentially as the population ages and the number of working-age people with disabilities grows.
To address this growing population, the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) recently launched a new website rating thousands of the state’s long-term care providers on a wide range of quality of care measures — information that will help consumers and their families make important choices in the planning of their health care.
The free online service, CalQualityCare.org, rates the care provided by nursing homes, hospice programs, and home health agencies, where data is available to evaluate performance. The site also provides information on many other kinds of long-term care, including assisted living, retirement communities, and day care options. CalQualityCare.org features an easy-to-use “Long Term Care Assistant” tool that helps consumers choose among long-term care options by asking 10 simple questions.
This website is completely independent with no commercial relationships that might bias ratings systems. The data are collected exclusively from federal and state agencies.
Here’s some frequently asked questions (PDF) about this new tool.
See our Long-Term Care section for more information in general on LTC and LTC insurance.
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