health care

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Hiking

Byuclafaculty

Earlier blog posts have noted that CalPERS‘ premiums for long-term care are going nowhere but up.  Another rate hike is being announced with an option instead to move to a lesser-value plan. UC employees and faculty are normally not covered by CalPERS’ pension and health care plans.  However, as state workers, they were offered the chance to enroll in CalPERS’ long-term care program when CalPERS got into that business.  Unfortunately, there was no guarantee concerning what the premiums would be over time.  From the Sacramento Bee‘s State Worker blog: The California Public Employees’ Retirement System today is mailing some 150,000…

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Strike Vote to Be Taken at UC Med Centers

Byuclafaculty

Strike at UCLA hospital in 2008 With contract negotiations stalled, union workers at University of California hospitals… say they will vote next week on whether to strike. The strike talk started Friday with a statement from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, which represents about 13,000 employees at university medical facilities across the state… The university attributes the current strike talk to a refusal by the union “to agree to UC’s pension reforms,” which require employees to pay a larger percentage of their incomes toward pensions starting July 1… But the union says just the…

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Dog Days at the UCLA Medical Center

Byuclafaculty

Several four-legged volunteers with the People-Animal Connection (PAC) program at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center and their human counterparts will star in an upcoming episode of the PBS television show, “Shelter Me: Let’s Go Home,” premiering in April… The show followed a handful of human/dog teams with UCLA’s animal-assisted therapy PAC program as they volunteered at the hospital. All of the dogs featured were adopted from shelters and now help people by bringing comfort to patients and their families, as well as joy to the doctors and nurses. “Our animal-assisted therapy dogs truly provide a sense of healing and comfort…

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Hospital Takeover?

Byuclafaculty

The original St. John’s Hospital in the early 1940s A report in the LA Times today suggests UCLA is considering a bid to take over St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica.  St. John’s is only a few blocks from Santa Monica Hospital which UCLA previously acquired. UCLA and the nation’s largest Catholic healthcare system are teaming up on a potential acquisition of St. John’s Health Center, a storied Santa Monica hospital up for sale after a recent management shake-up. The partnership between UCLA Health System and Ascension Health Alliance in St. Louis is one proposal under consideration by St. John’s…

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The Never-Ending Story of the UC-Riverside Med School

Byuclafaculty

UC-Riverside’s quest for $15 million from the state budget – not supported by the governor – seems unending.  From the Desert Sun: An Inland Empire lawmaker’s bill to secure $15 million in annual state funding for the UC Riverside School of Medicine cleared its first legislative hurdle Tuesday. AB 27, sponsored by Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, was approved by the Assembly Higher Education Committee and is now bound for the Assembly Appropriations Committee… Much of the school’s start-up funding has come from philanthropic and other non-state sources, though the county committed $20 million over the last two years. Full story…

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With One Question on Funding, Regents Approve UCLA New Med Center Building

Byuclafaculty

As predicted, the UC Regents approved the architectural and CEQA review for the planned new UCLA Teaching and Learning Center for the Health Sciences with a virtual rubber stamp.  There was one question on funding from a regent and the answer was that $120 million (!) would be raised from gifts.  No follow up on funding or costs was part of the approval.  By the way, if you raise $120 million by tapping donors, that means there will be less money from gifts that could be tapped for some other purpose.  In past regental reviews of this project, the issue…

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UC-Riverside Pushes Ahead With Med School

Byuclafaculty

UC-Riverside pushes on with its med school despite lack of state support.  From the Desert Sun: PALM DESERT — University of California, Riverside officials should know within two weeks whether the state will OK a land transfer critical to its new medical school’s presence in the Coachella Valley.  At issue is 11.5 acres along Frank Sinatra Drive, just east of UCR’s existing Palm Desert campus… The medical school plans to build an outpatient medical clinic there that can be used as a teaching facility for students and medical residents, Dean G. Richard Olds said… Olds said there is no plan…

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Regents to “Review” UCLA Teaching & Learning Center for Health Sciences

Byuclafaculty

The Regents will again be presented with a major UCLA capital project they have already discussed: The Teaching & Learning Center for the Health Sciences.  Regardless of the merits of this particular capital project or any other that comes before them from the campuses, in the end – as this blog has noted many times – the Regents have no independent review capability to evaluate capital proposals or to follow up on actual outcomes.  This particular project has a budget (see below) of $104.7 million, not chump change, plus another $6 million for furniture and equipment.  Past discussions at the…

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Long-Term Care Cop Out?

Byuclafaculty

Back on Feb. 20, we posted a piece on a big CalPERS hike for long-term care insurance.  We noted that although UC is not covered by CalPERS, as state employees, UC employees could buy – some might say were encouraged to buy – long-term care insurance through CalPERS.  Now premiums are climbing rapidly and some may drop the insurance (losing what they paid) due to the price hikes. From the Sacramento Bee State Worker Blog: Longtime policyholders say that when CalPERS was pushing the insurance in the 1990s, it guaranteed their rates wouldn’t rise. That gave younger adults – a…

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Pressure Mounts to Lift Cap on UC Student Health Insurance

Byuclafaculty

Rep. Nancy Pelosi and nine other members of Congress are urging the University of California to lift its caps on student health insurance – limits that for the rest of the country are illegal under the Affordable Care Act and that jeopardize students with catastrophic medical problems. “It is troubling that the health plan of one of the world’s most prestigious university systems would not adopt this industry standard,” the representatives wrote UC President Mark Yudof last week. “UC students and student workers should have access to the same health-care protections that millions of other students, student workers and Americans already enjoy,” said the letter from California’s Democratic…