After successfully pushing for reform of the city’s business tax, the Valley Industry and Commerce Association is taking on the state’s health care mess a much bigger and seemingly intractable issue.
For the first time anyone can remember, the influential Valley business organization has made reform of the state’s health care system a top priority as part of its 2005 annual work plan released this month.
Many companies and organizations have studied how to improve the costly U.S. health care system to no avail, but that is not discouraging VICA.
“Part of what we want to do is take a look at a lot of ideas. We don’t necessarily want to reinvent the wheel,” said VICA chairman Martin Coopers, who heads the public relations firm Cooper Beavers Inc. “This system is not on life-support but clearly needs to be at a trauma center.”
Driving the process is the unrelenting rise in health care premiums at levels well beyond the base inflation rate and employee salaries. Last week, a survey completed by the California HealthCare Foundation estimated that health care costs rose 11.4 percent in 2004 less than the 15.8 percent rise in 2003, but still in the double-digit range.
It is unclear what sort of proposals VICA’s members will be able to agree on, given that the organization includes both major corporations, such as Walt Disney Co., and much smaller firms.
In November’s election, VICA called for a “No” vote on Proposition 72, the referendum on a landmark bill that would have required medium and large businesses to provide health insurance to workers.
The bill was supposed to draw some support from large corporations on the theory that having more businesses provide health insurance would lower the premiums for those that already do so. But Coopers said many small firms in VICA opposed the mandate, outnumbering any potential support from larger ones.
Rand Report
The California Medical Association is giving the thumbs-up to a new study by Rand Corp. that recommends the state adopt guidelines issued by the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine for the treatment of injured workers.
The adoption of guidelines for care of injured workers was one of the key elements of last year’s workers’ compensation reform package. Guidelines are aimed at holding down unnecessary and inappropriate treatment and testing.
The doctors’ association has pushed for adoption of the ACOEM guidelines, which are written by specialists in the treatment of injured workers, but it also wants doctors’ decisions to be presumed correct in situations where there are no guidelines to direct care.
The state Division of Workers’ Compensation, which must decide which guidelines to adopt, is reviewing the Rand Report, as well as comments by the CMA and other interested parties.
Rx for Pain
This is apparently not how you spell relief.
The much-hated triplicate forms that doctors must use to prescribe powerful pain medications such as Oxycontin will be a thing of thing of the past, come Jan. 1. But what’s replacing them is not exactly drawing cheers.
For decades, doctors have had to order special three-part prescription forms from the Department of Justice to prescribe so-called Schedule II controlled pain medications, such as the popular Demerol.
Under the new system, doctors will no longer be required to fill out the triplicates, but will have to file tamper-resistant forms from specially approved printing companies.
The catch is that the new forms will now be required to order a far broader set of drug categories those in schedules II through V.
“I probably wrote one or two triplicates a week, but I write 10 a day of the others,” said Marcy Zwelling-Aamot, a Los Alamitos physician and former president of the Los Angeles County Medical Association. “It’s a lot of extra effort.”
Staff reporter Laurence Darmiento can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 237, or at
[email protected]
.
