Month: September 2013

Across the SF Bay, a Leader in LGBT Health Care

Jaime Jenett knows she’s been lucky. One afternoon in the summer of 2008, her 4-month-old son Simon was rushed to the emergency room. By that night, he was in the ICU, and by the morning, on life support. Simon was diagnosed with a heart condition called cardiomyopathy, and would stay in the hospital for another four months.

Bill Would Bring State Billions in Extra Federal Funds

The Legislature has sent a bill to Gov. Brown that would save hospitals from a major cut in reimbursements for treating disabled people under the Medi-Cal program. In exchange the hospitals have agreed implement a fee program that will bring the state $2.4 billion a year in federal healthcare funding.

A culture of coverage

The people who designed the Affordable Care Act employed an “If we build it” strategy reminiscent of the Field of Dreams, the classic 1989 film about an iconic baseball diamond built in an Iowa cornfield. If they built a more accessible health insurance system, the reasoning in Congress went, consumers would come and use it.

But will they?

Active Aging and Rebel Riders: An International Language

The proverb is immediately understood by motorcyclists in any language: “Four wheels move the body. Two wheels move the soul.”

As Active Aging Week approaches this Sunday, the inspirational story of 10 senior Taiwanese motorcyclists – the oldest a robust 94 – riding down California’s fabled Highway 1 last month provides an educational roadmap for staying vibrant and healthy.

Oct. 1 is only the beginning for health insurance exchange

In less than 30 days, California’s new online health insurance market is scheduled to open for business when Covered California throws the switch on a web site designed to allow consumers to shop for coverage and obtain subsidies in the form of tax credits from the federal government. Oct. 1 2013 has been circled on the calendar of health insurance reformers since shortly after Congress passed President Obama’s Affordable Care Act more than three years ago. The state has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the web site and the back-office connections to allow the system to communicate with a federal database to check the details in a consumer’s application. More than a million Californians who don’t get insurance through their job are expected to use the new marketplace in the first year. But as of now, state officials will say only that they expect the system to allow consumers to begin their applications online on Oct. 1. What happens then?

Cooking Class Teaches Critical Life Skills

San Francisco’s Women’s Resource Center is housed in a concrete building near the elevated highway and across the street from the city jail. On a recent summer day, the weather was chilly, the center’s large classroom was cold and the small tables crowded. Most of the students were there to serve part of sentence for a recent crime. Some were just out of jail, some were on probation or work release, and others were ordered to take courses instead of serving time behind bars.

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