California governor proposes drug rehab program changes after CNN investigation

(CNN) -- California Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed millions of dollars in additional funding to crack down on abuses in the state's drug rehab program as a result of an investigation by CNN and The Center for Investigative Reporting.

The governor's budget summary specifies additional government oversight needed to run the Drug Medi-Cal program.

"The budget proposes 21 positions and $2.2 million ... to continue the state's intensive focus on program integrity and expansion of drug treatment services by recertifying all providers in the state," says the budget summary, which was released Thursday.

The yearlong investigation by CNN and The Center for Investigative Reporting -- which culminated in reports in July on CNN.com and onCNN's "AC360º" television program -- revealed widespread fraud in the drug rehab program, which is part of the largest Medicaid system in the United States. The investigation revealed that convicted felons were operating clinics in violation of the law, clinics charged taxpayers for "ghost" patients and teens had been taken from their group homes for drug rehab even though they had no drug problems.

Regulators who could have stopped the fraud allowed it to continue, despite warnings that the system was being abused, the series found.

The investigation prompted a swift and strong reaction from the state. A total of 177 clinic sites have been suspended and 69 referred to the state's Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution. The head of the program publicly apologized for the fraud before a legislative oversight hearing in September.

"Due to concerns about program integrity in the Drug Medi-Cal program, DHCS (the California Department of Health Care Services) took steps in July 2013 to eliminate fraud and abuse in the program. ... DHCS has conducted a review of internal operations to improve oversight and monitoring of drug treatment programs, and has improved coordination with counties to ensure appropriate monitoring and recertification of all drug treatment providers," according to the budget summary.

State Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, chairman of the Senate Business, Professions and Professional Development Committee, said, "I am pleased the governor is proposing additional positions and funding to fight fraud in the Drug Medi-Cal program. We will analyze his proposal during the budget process to see if it is sufficient, but it is a good start."

DHCS spokesman Norman Williams said the money will allow the department to add a wide variety of new positions to scrutinize individual clinics and the department's own procedures.

Some staffers will comb through applications from rehab clinics to be recertified by the state -- a new requirement prompted by the series. Others will analyze data to make sure clinic billing matches the services provided, examine the department's policies and make recommendations for improvement.

"These are positions that will make the (Drug Medi-Cal) program stronger," Williams said. 

"This amount gives us the support necessary to continue our efforts ... in a way that we will ultimately be able to improve the integrity of the program."

Of the $2.2 million, half will come from the state's general fund, and the rest will be matched with federal funds.

All of the clinics featured in the CNN/CIR investigation have either closed on their own or have shut down after being suspended by the state. George Ilouno, one of the clinic operators who continued to stay open despite being out on bail on charges of Medi-Cal fraud and grand theft, pleaded guilty to Drug Medi-Cal fraud in September. He received a one-year suspended jail sentence, three years' probation, paid $90,000 in restitution to the state and must perform 60 days of community service.

CPHEN Statement on the California Budget Proposal for 2014-15

News Bulletin January 9, 2014 Statement from Ellen Wu, Executive Director of CPEHN, on the California Budget Proposal for 2014-15 Governor Brown’s proposal for the 2014-15 state budget, released yesterday, increases funding to health and human services but misses an important opportunity to restore some of the devastating cuts that have impacted the health of California’s communities of color. The budget proposal includes a $670 million increase to Medi-Cal, mostly for already-enacted implementation of the Affordable Care Act. And while the proposed budget “forgives” the past years of uncollected cuts to Medi-Cal providers, it leaves in place a 10% reduction of Medi-Cal rates. Additionally, the budget proposal does not restore any of the other previous cuts to Medi-Cal benefits. For more than a decade our communities have been asked to endure painful cuts to services due to structural deficits in the state budget. The passage of Proposition 30 in 2012 has been critical to providing much needed revenue for the state. California must use this opportunity to demonstrate a commitment to its most vulnerable communities by restoring previous cuts to our health and human services programs as well as making sure Californians who remain uninsured have access to affordable coverage. Visit our Policy Center for a detailed summary of the budget proposal. If you have any questions, please contact Cary Sanders at csanders@cpehn.org. If you would like to change your contact information, please email info@cpehn.org. If you would like to unsubscribe from CPEHN's Action Alerts, please email unsubscribe-actionalerts@cpehn.org. If you would like to unsubscribe from ALL CPEHN email communications, please email unsubscribe-all@cpehn.org. GET INVOLVED ·         Share With a Friend ·         Subscribe to our Newsletter, Action Alerts, or Event Invites ·         Join Our Network ·         Follow Us on Twitter @CPEHN ·         Like Us on Facebook ·         Donate

© 2014 / California Pan-Ethnic Health Network / info@cpehn.org MAIN OFFICE: 1221 Preservation Park Way, Suite 200, Oakland, CA 94612 Phone: (510) 832-1160 / Fax: (510) 832-1175 SACRAMENTO OFFICE: 1225 8th Street, Suite 470, Sacramento, CA 95814 Phone: (916) 447-1299 / Fax: (916) 447-1292

Prison secretary seeks delay in inmate court order

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—California will have no choice but to move 4,000 more inmates to private prisons in other states if federal judges refuse to postpone a court-ordered population cap, state Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said Wednesday.

The state faces an April 18 deadline to reduce overcrowding in its 33 adult prisons. The judges have found reducing overcrowding to be the key step in improving inmate medical and mental health care, but Gov. Jerry Brown is seeking a three-year delay.

Brown's budget proposal, prematurely leaked Wednesday, assumes that the court grants a two-year extension to meet the cap. Like Beard, the budget says that if the extension is not granted the state will have to spend more money on short-term capacity increases while likely cutting spending on rehabilitation programs in order to avoid releasing inmates early.

Beard said such a delay would give the state time to build cells for nearly 3,500 additional inmates. That would bring the state close to meeting the federal population cap while avoiding the need to send more inmates elsewhere.

It also would give time for rehabilitation programs to work, he said. Those programs are designed to reduce the number of convicts who commit new crimes after their release and then get sent back to prison. Brown's budget projects $81 million would be available for rehabilitation programs in the fiscal year that begins July 1 if the two-year extension is granted, but the money will be eaten up by incarceration costs if it is denied, according to a copy of the budget posted online by The Sacramento Bee.

"We really don't want to do more out-of-state either, so we're hopeful we get our extension," Beard said in an interview. "But if we don't get that, then our only alternative will be to increase the out-of-state (transfers)."

A panel of three federal judges has set a Friday deadline for an end to negotiations between Brown's administration and attorneys representing inmates.

The judges already postponed by nearly 10 months their original June 30, 2013, deadline for the state to reduce its inmate population to about 110,000 inmates. Beard said that gave the state crucial time to begin operating what used to be a private prison in the Mojave Desert, open a medical hospital in Stockton and send additional inmates to five community correctional facilities within California.

Without those moves, the state would be looking at sending up to 7,000 inmates out of state instead of 4,000, he said.

California already houses roughly 8,900 inmates in Corrections Corporation of America prisons in Arizona, Mississippi and Oklahoma. The Department of Finance estimates it costs the state $29,500 a year for each inmate housed out of state, although that amount is less than the average per-inmate cost within California because mostly younger and healthier prisoners are selected for the transfers.

The judges last year ordered the state not to move more inmates out of state, but Beard said he expects the judges would lift that ban when negotiations end this week.

An additional delay would give the state time to open an expansion of the Stockton medical facility this spring to house about 1,100 mentally ill inmates. The state last week also detailed plans to build three medium-security housing units over the next 2 1/2 years at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego and Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, 40 miles southeast of Sacramento, to hold a combined 2,376 inmates. The combined cost of all the new housing is $700 million.

Beard would not say if the budget Brown will propose Friday calls for building additional prison cells.

California already has reduced its prison population by about 25,000 inmates during the last two years, mainly through the governor's criminal justice realignment plan that is sending lower-level offenders to county jails instead of state prisons. 

Yet the inmate population keeps climbing, said Don Specter, director of the nonprofit Prison Law Office and one of the attorneys representing inmates in the long-running federal case.
"It's continuing to increase, so any building would be spending billions of dollars for only a temporary fix," he said. "It also shows that realignment was only a temporary fix, as well."

Brown and lawmakers of both political parties have been fighting previous court rulings that say the state can safely release more than 4,000 inmates by increasing good-behavior credits. The judges have previously said the state also could release elderly and medically incapacitated inmates without endangering the public.

"Other states and jurisdictions use lots of other methods other than increasing capacity, and there's no reason California can't do the same thing," Specter said.

The budget also includes nearly $65 million for the Department of State Hospitals to help the agency deal with a more violent mentally ill population that increasingly comes from the criminal justice system. A federal judge last year blamed the department for part of the problems in treating mentally ill prison inmates.



via: http://www.mercurynews.com/california/ci_24871805/prison-secretary-seeks-delay-inmate-court-order

Statewide Day of Action

Join us this Friday, January 10th 

for our 

Statewide Day of Action

Choose a location nearest you and let your voice be heard!

San Francisco

Where: 350 McAllister Street

When: 12:00 pm

Contact: Pete Woiwode

(510) 504-9552

pete@communitychange.org

Sacramento

Where: Capitol Room TBD

When: 11:00 am or following

Governor Brown's statement

Contact: Pete Woiwode

(510) 504-9552

pete@communitychange.org

San Jose

Where: 200 E. Santa Clara St.

When: 10:00 am

Contact: Pete Woiwode

(510) 504-9552

pete@communitychange.org

Bakersfield

Where: Liberty Bell at 

1415 Truxton Ave., 93301

When: 12:00 pm

Contact: Paola Fernandez

(661) 378-7290

pfernandez@communitychange.org

Los Angeles

Where: State Building at

300 S. Spring Street, 90013

When: 12:00 pm

Contact: Astrid Campos

(714) 396-8242

acampos@communitychange.org

Riverside

Where: California Towers at

3737 Main Street, 92501

When: 11:30 am

Contact: Maribel Nunez

(562) 569-4051

mnunez@communitychange.org

Hike in California 'car tax' would raise up to $4 billion

A proposed ballot measure to more than double California's vehicle license fee would raise $3 billion to $4 billion annually for state and local transportation programs, according to estimates by the Legislative Analyst's Office.

Both versions of the proposed ballot measure by Transportation California would phase in a surcharge to the fee, charging motorists an extra one percent of the vehicle's value each year. The fee has been .65 percent of a vehicle's market value since the late 1990s, with a temporary increase to 1.15 percent from May 2009 through June 2011.

Transportation California's Will Kempton, a former Caltrans director, has said that the measure's supporters will decide this month whether to commit the money to gather signatures to qualify the proposal for the November 2014 ballot. Signature collection could begin after the release of titles and summaries for the measure, which is expected Jan. 13.

Proponents would have up to 150 days to collect 807,615 valid voter signatures to qualify for the 2014 ballot.

PHOTO: Traffic runs along the southbound 110 Freeway towards downtown Los Angeles, April 28, 2005. Associated Press/ Mark J. Terrill

Obamacare Met With Confusion, Relief At Start Of New Year

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The new year brought relief for Americans who previously had no health insurance or were stuck in poor plans, but it also led to confusion after the troubled rollout of the federal health care reforms sent a crush of late applications to overloaded government agencies.

That created stacks of yet-to-be-processed paperwork and thousands — if not millions — of people unsure about whether they have insurance.

Mike Estes of Beaverton, Ore., finally received his insurance card on Dec. 27 after applying in early November. Still, the family was thrilled to have insurance through the Oregon Health Plan, Oregon's version of Medicaid, because their previous $380-a-month premium "literally crushed our family's finances," Estes said.

Obama administration officials estimate that 2.1 million consumers have enrolled so far through the federal and state-run health insurance exchanges that are a central feature of the federal law. But even before coverage began, health insurance companies complained they were receiving thousands of faulty applications from the government, and some people who thought they had enrolled for coverage have not received confirmation.

Tens of thousands of potential Medicaid recipients in the 36 states relying on the federal exchange also are in limbo after the federal website that was supposed to send their applications to the states failed to do so.

Reports of complications were scattered around the country.

In Burlington, Vt., the state's largest hospital had almost two dozen patients seek treatment with new health insurance policies, but more than half of those did not have insurance cards. Minnesota's health care exchange said 53,000 people had enrolled for coverage through its marketplace, but it was unable to confirm the insurance status of an additional 19,000 people who created accounts but did not appear to have purchased the plans.

In Connecticut, officials were pleading for patience as call centers fielded calls from people who are concerned because they had yet to receive a bill for premiums or an insurance identification card.

"This is an unprecedented time, because there are a record number of people who have applied for coverage with an effective date of Jan. 1," said Donna Tommelleo, a spokeswoman for the Connecticut Department of Insurance.

Resolutions for better politics in the New Year

SACRAMENTO — Forty-five percent of Americans make New Year's resolutions, so I've read. And about 90% of those vows wind up being blown off.

But we're allowed to give it another try every year. It's part of the self-improvement process, a vital acknowledgment of personal flaws.

So in the interest of bettering the species — and nothing personal — I offer some 2014 resolutions for Sacramento politicians. Never mind that I have done this before and generally been ignored.

Gov. Jerry Brown should resolve to:

•Savor and bask in all the media speculation — even if it's a distant reach — about his possibly being tempted to run for president in 2016. For the fourth time.

At his age — he'll be 78 during the next presidential election — and after those earlier, ill-conceived stabs at the job, to even be mentioned is an achievement and honor. Soak it in. Smell the roses.

But Brown knows better than to take the chatter seriously. These are slow times in the news biz and political writers are scraping for anything to keep busy. He understands. Presumably.

•Be more considerate. But this seems hopeless.

Case in point: Brown continues to refuse to speak to the Sacramento Press Club, as previous governors routinely did, promoting their agenda for the coming year. It was always a sold-out luncheon for a good cause: refunding the club's scholarship program for college journalism students. This governor doesn't even bother to respond to the club's invitation.

It's not that he's too busy doing the people's work. He takes time to address special interests and rich supporters with his hand out for money to finance his 2014 reelection campaign.

Here I interrupt with a proposed resolution for fellow news types:

•Stop writing and broadcasting that Brown hasn't announced whether he'll run for a fourth term. When he's begging donors for millions to fund the race, that's enough announcement. That's running.

Back to Brown resolutions:

•Seriously rethink two potential behemoth boondoggles — the bullet train and delta tunnels — before the state gets in so deep it can't escape.

The bullet train has a $68-billion price tag with only $12 billion in sight. That's fiscally irresponsible.

The delta project is priced at $25 billion — but could soar to $60-billion-plus with interest on borrowing — and involves tearing up a garden spot to water a desert. More creative thinking is needed.

Now resolutions for legislators:

•Pass fewer laws. Address only legitimate state problems, rather than merely pumping out fodder for press releases. Each bill costs $20,000 on average to process.

The lawmakers regressed in 2013. They passed 901 bills, according to the governor's office. Brown signed 805 and vetoed 96. That's up from 2011, a comparable year in the legislative cycle. That year they passed 889. The governor signed 761 and vetoed 128.

•Conduct more of the public's business in the public light. Longer committee meetings with more public testimony. Fewer sneaky "gut-and-amend" shenanigans at the end of legislative sessions.

Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

via: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-cap-resolutions-20131230,0,1522226.column#ixzz2p64IyREX