health care

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UCLA Med School Linked to Wrong Crowd?

Byuclafaculty

LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik’s column today highlights a connection between Herbalight – a food supplements firm – and the UCLA med school. Herbalight is in the midst of a tug-of-war between some Wall Street interests.  One side claims that the firm is a Ponzi-type scheme whose stock will eventually come crashing down.  Yes, the word “Ponzi” appears in such claims.  Check out page 177 at this link:http://factsaboutherbalife.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Who-wants-to-be-a-Millionaire.pdf The other side argues the company is legit and a good investment. Excerpt: Herbalife International says it’s all about helping people “pursue healthy, active lives.” UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine likes to think…

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A Different Kind of Grade Inflation

Byuclafaculty

From the Orange County Register: When Jose Carrillo went through medical school at Dartmouth College a decade ago, students would have thick books weighing down their white coats with reference information in case they needed it while making rounds… Today, Carrillo is helping third-year medical students understand neurology at UCI Medical Center in Orange… (L)oaded on the iPads in the pockets of the medical students’ coats is every textbook, note, flash card and question from their first two years of medical school – so much information that its equal in printed copies once covered entire tables. All that information sits on…

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Issue of UC Health Cap for Students Heats Up

Byuclafaculty

We noted in a prior post this past weekend that there is a cap on the dollar payouts for student health insurance at UC.  Major illnesses can cause students to hit the cap. Below is an excerpt from a San Francisco Chronicle article that seems to imply – but doesn’t quite say – that UC chose self-funding of the student health plan to avoid a ban on such caps in the Obama health plan:  Health care limits like the one imposed by UC are already illegal under the sweeping federal health-care law – dubbed Obamacare – that takes full effect…

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UC Student Medical Insurance Limits

Byuclafaculty

From the Contra Costa Times: UC Santa Cruz graduate student Micha Rahder suffers from a rare disorder that requires her to be hooked up to an IV over two days, five to eight hours at a time, every four weeks… In November, she got a letter from the university saying she had used $378,000 of the $400,000 lifetime limit for students on the University of California student health insurance plan (also known as UC SHIP), Radner said. In early January, a little more three years after her first treatment, she received another letter. “It comes from the Office of the…

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Regents Again Approve a UCLA Building Despite Cost Concerns

Byuclafaculty

Blog readers will recall that at a prior Regents meeting, UCLA produced a very sketchy and high cost plan for a new medical building, a “teaching and learning center.”  The presentation was so sketchy and the costs were so worrisome for the Regents to ask for a revised plan.  At the Jan. 16 meeting of the Grounds and Building Committee, UCLA came back with a revised plan for a $104.7 million project – said to be significantly scaled back – with more details.As with the earlier hotel project, UCLA apparently had offline meetings with Regents after the prior meeting (such…

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Blogging Pause

Byuclafaculty

The 1955 UCLA medical school graduating class Yours truly normally posts on this blog daily.  However, on Monday, Jan. 14, he is having some surgery at UCLA for a non-life-threatening condition.  So blogging will halt for a period to be determined.  But there will be interesting things to watch out for this week including the Regents meetings at which Gov. Brown seems likely to participate.  We will eventually receive and post the audio of those meetings.

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Promises, Promises on UC Retiree Health

Byuclafaculty

Jim Chalfant pointed me to the item below about retirees at one of the labs (Livermore) suing UC for not providing what they view as promised retiree health care benefits.  They were given a right to sue – which is not the same thing as obtaining a final favorable decision – on appeal.  UC has generally taken the position that while earned pension benefits are a vested right, retiree health care is essentially something nice UC does but doesn’t have to do.    There may be special circumstances in terms of what was said specifically to this group of employees. …

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High at UCLA in 1963

Byuclafaculty

In an interview on NPR’s “Fresh Air” program with Terry Gross, Dr. Oliver Sacks notes that he started experimenting with drugs that can induce hallucinations while doing his residency at UCLA: …GROSS: What was the first time you tried a drug that induced perceptual distortions? SACKS: I think it was in 1963, and I was in Los Angeles, at UCLA, doing a residency in neurology, but I was also much on the beach, on Venice Beach and Muscle Beach. And there, there was quite a drug culture, as there was also in Topanga Canyon, where I lived. And one day,…

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Good News Story About the Med Center at UCLA; Not So Good at UC-Davis

Byuclafaculty

The web brings Good News about the UCLA med center in the form of a new transplant procedure: http://www.smmirror.com/articles/Health/UCLA-Performs-First-Breathing-Lung-Transplant-In-United-States/36374 On the other hand, our friends at UC-Davis are getting anything but good news from the feds in a story that might make some folks there nostalgic for the days when all they had to worry about was pepper spraying: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/23/5072625/evaluation-of-uc-davis-medical.html

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Please Sir, Can I Have My Med School?

Byuclafaculty

From the Riverside Press-Enterprise: Only hours into the 2013-2014 session, a pair of new lawmakers from Riverside introduced a pair of virtually identical measures to annually appropriate $15 million to UC Riverside’s School of Medicine.  The bills are the first of their kind so early in a legislative year. Their authors, state Sen. Richard Roth, D-Riverside, and Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, pledged to secure money for the medical school during their campaigns this year. …University officials have tried since 2008 to secure ongoing state money for the school amid massive budget shortfalls. In 2011, officials postponed the school’s first freshman…