The Majority Of California's Medi-Cal Caregivers Live In Or Near Poverty
The demand for caregivers is growing rapidly as California's population ages, but the majority of state's Medi-Cal caregivers earn poverty or near-poverty wages and have poor access to health care and food, a new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research has found. Fifty-seven percent of paid Medi-Cal caregivers - and almost half of all 450, 000 paid caregivers in the state - have incomes that leave them in poverty or near poverty, according to the study, "Hidden in Plain Sight: California's Paid Medi-Cal Caregivers Are Vulnerable.
Improving Primary Care Initiative By Centers For Medicare And Medicaid Innovation
It is called the CPC (Comprehensive Primary Care) initiative, and aims to strengthen coordination and collaboration between private and public health care payers in order to improve primary care. According to Medicare, it will liaise with both commercial and State health insurance plans and offer financial incentives to primary care physicians who effectively coordinate care for patients in their care. CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) says that primary care practices that opt to take part in this initiative will receive money to help them better coordinate primary care for their patients on Medicare.
Risky Treatments With Larger Rewards Preferable To 'Safe Bets' For Cancer Patients
A new analysis provides a closer look at how much cancer patients value hope - with important implications for how insurers value treatment, particularly in end-of-life care. The analysis led by Darius Lakdawalla, director of research at the Schaeffer Center at USC and associate professor in the USC Price School of Public Policy, surveyed 150 cancer patients currently undergoing treatment, and is part of a special issue on cancer spending from the journal Health Affairs. Lakdawalla and his co-authors found the overwhelming majority of cancer patients prefer riskier treatments that offer the possibility of longer survival over safer treatments: 77 percent of cancer patients said they would rather take a "hopeful gamble" - treatments that offer a 50/50 chance of either adding three years or no additional survival - to "safe bet" treatments that would keep them alive for 18 months, but no longer.