5.15.12
The ballooning budget deficit in California might mean hospitals and nursing homes will get less state money.
Reuters: California Targets Health, Public Workers To Fix Budget Hole
California Governor Jerry Brown on Monday unveiled a revised state budget plan that calls for new cuts to healthcare for the poor and elderly and reduced work hours for state employees as part of an effort to close a $15.7 billion budget gap (Christie, 5/14).
The Associated Press: California Gov. Jerry Brown Urges Austere Cuts, Tax Hikes To Tackle Reemerging Deficit
Brown said California's sputtering economic recovery is putting a heavier-than-expected drag on state tax revenue. The state has been blocked from making cuts to Medi-Cal and In-Home Supportive Services in court and by federal requirements. The revised budget deficit is $6.5 billion more than the $9.2 billion gap Brown anticipated in January (5/15).
Sacramento Bee: Optimistic Projections Led To Dramatic Surge In California Budget Deficit
[T]he state budget deficit had grown by a remarkable 70 percent since January, but fiscal experts said the economy had little to do with it. They instead blamed a bad marriage of volatile capital gains and political intransigence that led state leaders last year to count on a huge upswing in revenues that never materialized. At the same time, corporate tax changes from 2009 appear to have cost California more than state officials ever realized (Yamamura, 5/15).
San Jose Mercury News: Gov. Jerry Brown Slashes Programs For The Poor, Threatens To Do The Same To Schools
Brown also proposed cuts to hospitals and nursing homes to reduce Medi-Cal costs ... reducing state workers' pay by 5 percent through contract renegotiations; and using assets that used to belong to local redevelopment agencies (Harmon, Richman, Noguchi and de Sa, 5/14).
KQED: Brown's New Budget Cuts Would Hit Health Programs
Many of Governor Brown’s previous attempts to cut back on health care spending in the Golden State have been stymied by lawsuits or federal agencies that deemed the cuts too severe (Varney, 5/14).
KQED's State of Health blog: Governor's New Budget Slices -- Again -- Into Health Care
In a conference call with reporters today, Secretary of Health and Human Services Diana Dooley said the cuts to her agency were inevitable. "The problem we have and always have in health and human services is this is where most of the spending is. The spending is in education and health and human services to a very large degree, and the only place you can cut back are the places where you are spending" (Aliferis, 5/14).
California Healthline: May Budget Revise Hits Health Care Hard
Those proposals include: Reducing supplemental payments to private hospitals, along with elimination of public hospital grants and stopping increases to managed care plans for some supplemental public hospital payments. Taking back the 2.4 percent rate increase to nursing homes (Gorn, 5/15).
California Watch: Advocates Fear Patient Care Will Suffer Under State Budget Cuts
The revised budget poses a new set of challenges to care providers and patient advocates. Last week, groups representing doctors, nurses and nursing home residents decried a comparatively minor budget change that would have cut the mandate for hospital and nursing home inspectors to perform unannounced inspections to monitor compliance with state laws (Jewett, 5/15).
5.15.12
The plan, which includes an emphasis on research, sets 2025 as the target date for finding effective treatments for this disease.
National Journal: HHS Announces New Alzheimer's Plan Tuesday
Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius releases the administration's plan for fighting Alzheimer's disease later on Tuesday at the National Institutes of Health. Aging experts have been warning that the U.S. faces an epidemic of Alzheimer's as the giant Baby Boom generation hits the senior years. A team led by Denis Evans at Rush-Presbyterian–St Luke's Medical in Chicago projected in 2003 that by 2050, more than 13 million Americans will have the incurable brain disease, compared to about 5 million now (Fox, 5/14).
The Associated Press: Clock Ticking With New Plan To Fight Alzheimer's
The Obama administration is adopting a landmark national strategy to fight Alzheimer's disease, with an ambitious goal of finding some effective treatments by 2025. For families suffering today, the first National Alzheimer's Plan offers some help too. Starting Tuesday, families can turn to a one-stop website, www.alzheimers.gov, for easy-to-understand information about where to get help. Doctors also will get a chance to receive training on how to better care for people with Alzheimer's (Neergaard, 5/15).
Reuters: U.S. Launches Ambitious Alzheimer's Plan With Research Push
The U.S. government launched an ambitious push to develop new treatments for Alzheimer's on Tuesday with a first prevention study of high-risk patients and tests on an insulin nasal spray that has shown promise in earlier studies. The trials, funded by grants of $16 million and $7.9 million respectively, are part of a national Alzheimer's plan, a sweeping effort to find an effective way to prevent or treat Alzheimer's by 2025 and improve the care of those already afflicted with the brain-wasting disease (Steenhuysen, 5/15).
CQ HealthBeat: Collins Sees Opening to Accelerate Progress Against Alzheimer's
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins kicked off a two-day scientific conference on Alzheimer's disease Monday by saying he sees great promise in recent efforts to counter the mind-destroying condition. "We might be able to accelerate progress in a way that offers real hope to those individuals who are affected," he told researchers at the NIH Bethesda campus for the meeting (Reichard, 5/14).
CBS (Video): Promising Alzheimer's Research Delayed By Shortage Of Volunteer Patients
In Bethesda, Md. Monday, the National Institutes of Health began hosting a two-day summit on the fight against Alzheimer's disease. More than 5 million Americans have the disease, a number expected to triple by 2050. And researchers trying to defeat the disease are facing an unexpected hurdle, as CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports. ... "The problem is finding volunteers to join the studies," Turner said. "Patients." This one study of 750 patients is 250 patients short. Nationally, the shortfall is in the thousands, with almost every clinical trial related to Alzheimer's needing more volunteers (Andrews, 5/14).
5.14.12
NPR examines a new way to combat Alzheimer's -- with storytelling. In the meantime, health care changes to programs and budgets have some worried about how they will affect the aging and those with disabilities.
NPR: Alzheimer's Patients Turn To Stories Instead Of Memories
Storytelling is one of the most ancient forms of communication -- it's how we learn about the world. It turns out that for people with dementia, storytelling can be therapeutic. It gives people who don't communicate well a chance to communicate. And you don't need any training to run a session (Silberner, 5/14).
HealthyCal: The Health Perils Of Aging: Lonely and Sick
Social isolation and its common offspring -- loneliness -- became a political hot potato when California recently cut back on its adult day health care program, disqualifying 20 percent of the state's older and disabled citizens from its attendance rolls. Families who depended on the centers for medical supervision and social interaction suddenly had to scramble to find new programs to care for these relatives. For seniors with or without families, this often meant more time home alone. ... Loneliness can increase ... blood pressure, limit the body's ability to fight off illness, and has been linked to higher death rates (Perry, 5/13).
North Carolina Health News: NC Creates A Dilemma For The Grahams
Nancy Graham is 37 and has a developmental disability, the result of a genetic disease called Tay-Sachs, that's slowly eating away at her nervous system. ... The Grahams say they worry about the changes coming to Smoky Mountain Center ... If the Graham's moved Nancy to a nursing home, the state would pay more for her care, and they believe she wouldn't get care that's as good as what they provide. But, the Grahams are being given fewer services to use for Nancy's care because she lives at home (Wilson, 5/11).
5.10.12
The New York Times: Working Late, By Choice Or Not
With the value of many 401(k)'s and homes taking a beating during the recession and with energy and health care prices climbing, many who dreamed that retirement was just around the corner have reluctantly kicked their retirement plans down the road (Greenhouse, 5/9).
