Want to improve your health? Drive an electric vehicle. Ok, so maybe that is overstating it a bit. Beyond improving your psychic well being, an electric car will have a negligible impact on your individual health. However, if everyone were to start driving Plug-In Electric Vehicles (PEVs), the cumulative impact on public health would be dramatic.
Author: California Health Report
California consumers got their first glimpse Wednesday at the insurance coverage that will be available later this year when the state implements the federal health reform known as the Affordable Care Act. The benefit plans and the first-year cost to consumers who will be eligible for federal subsidies were unveiled by Covered California, the agency in charge of implementing the new federal law, which Congress and President Obama adopted nearly three years ago and the US Supreme Court upheld last summer.
California’s notorious tax-revenue roller coaster is on the way up again. How many times do we need to see this movie before we remember how it ends? The state needs to find a way to set aside unexpected windfalls as a buffer for the inevitable bad times that always follow. Daniel Weintraub’s weekly essay.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office now projects that 7 million people will lose employer-provided health insurance by 2022 as the federal health reform, known as the Affordable Care Act, takes root. That estimate is up from 4 million that the CBO projected in a study last summer. Even with the change, however, the office still expects the new law to reduce the number of uninsured in America by 27 million. The biggest reason for the jump in the number of people who might lose insurance on the job? Lower income taxes. Last year’s estimate assumed income tax rates would increase across the board on Jan. 1 when the Bush-era tax cuts expired. But a compromise reached on New Years Day made those tax rates permanent for people earning less than $450,000. And that effectively made employer-provided health insurance less attractive for both workers and employers. Since insurance premiums paid by employers are tax free, those premiums are more valuable as taxes increase. With taxes staying relatively low, the CBO now says that more employers are likely to drop insurance and direct their workers into the new health exchanges, where many will qualify for subsidies. To see a little more detail, see page 62 of the CBO study here.
Baby boomers are living longer than their parents but they are not as healthy, a new study says. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, says boomers born between 1946 and 1964 have higher rates of chronic disease, more disability and lower self-rated health than people were the same age 15 to 20 years ago. Boomers are more likely to be limited in performing daily tasks and are twice as likely to use a cane. They’re also more likely to suffer from heart disease and diabetes.
Gov. Jerry Brown is set on enacting major education reform. But he, and Californians, should remember that the state has an important role to play in setting standards and measuring performance, even while teachers and their supervisors are given more freedom to decide what goes on in the classroom. Daniel Weintraub’s weekly essay.
The USDA has proposed new regulations to make school snacks healthier. The rules would affect snacks sold in vending machines, cafeterias and school stories but exempt treats brought into the classroom by students and parents (including birthday cupcakes) and food sold at after-school events like football games. To see the rules, click here.
California’s rate of premature births declined a tick in preliminary data from 2011, but is still higher than the March of Dimes goal of 9.6 percent by 2020, the group said in a national report card issued this week.
As the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act approaches, the most important question might be this: how are employers going to react? Early indications suggest that many companies — and perhaps even unions — will drop coverage for workers and send them to the newly created, subsidized insurance exchanges instead. Eventually, this could create a series of defacto single-payer plans.
A record-high number of Californians now support the Affordable Care Act — President Barack Obama’s federal health reform plan, according to a new independent poll.
The survey, by the Public Policy Institute of California, also found the highest support ever for a plan to allow undocumented immigrants to become legal U.S. residents.