An injunction that will affect 500 alleged gang members is put in place in the Glendale Corridor, including Echo Park and Silver Lake, increasingly trendy and affluent LA neighborhoods. Though crime has been steadily declining in the city, police say the injunction is necessary for public safety.
Managers who run mobile health clinics are hopeful that the new health care law will benefit them – not put them out of business.
Domestic violence service providers in rural areas, already hard-pressed for resources, are reeling from federal budget cuts that took effect earlier this year and the ongoing shutdown of much of the federal government.
Ask most domestic violence service providers about whether they have sufficient resources and you’ll probably get the same answer: it’s never enough. There’s always a gap in what services are needed and what services are available.
Jerry Schumacher’s Fullerton-based engineering firm seems like the perfect example of what President Obama would like to see from American business when it comes to health care. The company offers coverage to all of its full-time employees, and pays 100 percent of the monthly premium. But Schumacher still lives in fear of the Affordable Care Act, the federal health insurance reform known widely as “Obamacare.” He thinks it can only make things tougher on him. With fewer than 50 employees, Schumacher isn’t affected by the law. And even if the company payroll grows and surpasses that threshold, the most the federal law would require of Schumacher is to do what he does now voluntarily: provide affordable coverage for his workers. Still, he’s worried. “Obamacare is just another way of taxing people,” he says. “It’s another thing that squashes the small guy, and even the medium-size employer.” Schumacher is not alone. Small business owners across California and around the country are struggling to understand what federal health reform means for them, its benefits and its burdens.
As a child, Tim Carpenter vacationed near an arts colony in Saratoga Springs. Decades later, after creating senior health centers at overburdened hospitals, Carpenter remembered the arts colony and saw a way to help prevent age-related decay in the first place.
Domestic violence calls to police are down statewide, but advocates question statistics.
When Cody Wallace heard that he had high blood pressure, he wasn’t too worried about the diagnosis. His doctor prescribed a drug to help manage his hypertension, one that he would likely have to take for the rest of his life. But he didn’t feel sick.
Nearly 1 million Californians have visited a new online insurance marketplace that is the centerpiece of the federal health reform known as the Affordable Care Act, officials say. Of those visitors between Oct. 1 and Oct. 5, about 16,000 completed the eligibility process, and with family members, they represented about 28,000 consumers. But officials with Covered California, the state-run and federally funded agency that created and manages the marketplace, couldn’t say how many of those people will actually buy insurance. At this point the system takes consumers through the eligibility process but does not ask them for payment; they will be billed by the insurance company they choose. And those bills probably won’t go out until mid-November for policies that take effect Jan. 1. “The train has left the station,” said Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California. “These are big numbers and they are proof of pent-up demand.” Lee acknowledged that consumers who logged into the system or called the agency’s 800-number in the first few days faced long wait times and many of them probably gave up. But he said by week’s end the waits for telephone help were down to an average of four minutes, and the agency’s goal is to serve everyone within 30 seconds.
Community clinics – the backbone of California’s health care safety net – face a whipsaw from the Affordable Care Act. On the one hand, the law opens the state’s free health program for the poor, Medi-Cal, to more than a million Californians who don’t have insurance today. This should mean a big increase in business for the clinics, a rush they might struggle to accommodate. But the ACA also makes private insurance available to the working poor, many of whom have depended on the clinics for their care until now. These people will now have other options.
With a health insurance marketplace, or exchange, open and ready for business in California, consumers now have access to a number of options when considering health care coverage — including the phone.