Soon after news broke last week of the Trump administration’s finalized “public charge” rule, benefit enrollers at the Eisner Health community clinic in downtown Los Angeles started getting phone calls.
clinics
By Genevieve Bookwalter
As federal health care reform promises insurance for tens of thousands of Santa Clara County residents, local health clinics are scrambling to prepare for the expected onslaught in demand.
Nearly six in ten low-income Californians say they would be interested in switching health care providers if they had a choice, according to a new, independent survey of poor and near-poor state residents. And if the federal health reform passed last year is implemented as planned, many of those Californians will get that choice. That new freedom could reshape the health care landscape in ways large and small. One thing it would do is force community clinics and health
centers to be more responsive to patient needs, since many of those patients would have the ability to go elsewhere with federal subsidies and a state health insurance exchange open for business.
Some say that lifting California’s ban on hospitals hiring doctors directly would help limit the shortage of physicians in rural and inner city areas. But the idea would actually make things worse.