Month: March 2010

ashby wolfe

Why we need more general practice docs

By Ashby Wolfe

We are not made up of organs only. We are human. We need someone to be looking at the whole picture, someone to help us discuss end-of-life care issues with our families and elderly parents. Someone who can explain why it is important for a family member to see three different doctors to control her diabetes and heart failure. The system is too complex to assume patients can navigate the waters on their own…which may be why patients with chronic conditions often see the progression of their disease as something beyond their own control.

Bay Area planners back local fuel tax for transit

By Daniel Weintraub

Democrats in the Legislature threw a fiscal lifeline to public transit last week, bolstering financing for buses and trains at a time when the state is cutting just about everything else. But leaders of the Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission saw the moment as a lost opportunity for fundamental change in the way California pays for public transit. They want a local sales tax on fuel.

California’s long-term unemployed: a city the size of San Francisco

By Michael Bernick

The number of long-term unemployed in California has now reached a level roughly equivalent to a city the size of San Francisco. And more and more of them are workers with backgrounds in financial services, computer operations, commercial and residential real estate and human resources. Each of these jobs usually attracts tens or hundreds of applicants when an opening is announced.

Water for Life

By Martin Ricard

The East Oakland Boxing Association is about more than boxing. The center also has a youth internship program that trains young people in skills that could help them get a job or start a business. Recently, a group of youth interns worked with another nonprofit to overhaul the center’s water use and improve its water conservation.

A modest proposal: break up the CSU

By Michael Fitzgerald

California’s 23-campus state university system can’t seem to function as it is currently structured. The system’s centralized administration is doing more harm than good. Maybe we should blow it apart and let each campus control its own future.

The Blue Cross business model

By Anthony Wright

Anthem Blue Cross has been under scrutiny for its recent rate hikes. But that scrutiny should go beyond the rate hikes to their overall business practices—and the broken health system that rewards bad behavior. The company has perfected a business model based on collecting premiums from the healthy and avoiding as much as possible actually providing coverage to those who are sick.

One way to help solve the doctor shortage

By Robert Hartmann

California is experiencing a worsening shortage of doctors in rural and low-income communities, in part because of decades-old laws that no longer serve our needs. I have worked as a “country doctor” for 22 years. It’s the kind of work I always wanted to do, but it’s a tough sell for younger doctors today – even for those who see it as their professional calling. College and medical school tuition and subsequent debt are exorbitant. More patients in rural communities are uninsured or on Medi-Cal than privately insured. The doctors who treat them are routinely paid less than half of the cost of care.

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