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Archive for the ‘Language Access’ Category

Judge Rules that Two Hospitals Broke Law by Not Offering Charity Care to Patients, Hospitals Agree to $4.5M Settlement

Posted in Advocacy, Assistance, Consumer Protection, Economics of Health Care, Ethics, Language Access, State of Washington, Translation on 19 February 2017| 1 Comment »

At long last, a favorable ruling  came in December 2016 for former patients at Yakima Regional Medical and Cardiac Center and Toppenish Community Hospital, both in Central Washington, when the hospitals agreed to pay $4.5 million into a settlement fund to compensate those who were wrongly denied financial  assistance from 2007-2014.  Last July, Yakima County Superior Court Judge Susan Hahn ruled that the hospitals had violated Washington’s Consumer Protection Act by failing to notify and screen low-income patients for free or reduced-cost care, as required under another state law, the Charity Care Act which was enacted in 1989. The Charity Care Act applies to all hospitals operating in Washington, and to all patients, insured or uninsured alike, who meet income eligibility requirements: those with incomes at 100% or less of the Federal Poverty Level  (FPL) are eligible for free care, and those whose incomes are at 101-200% of FPL are entitled to discounts.

The legal case on behalf of the patients took slightly over 3 years to be resolved. Due to record-keeping gaps at the hospitals, it is unknown how many former patients are potentially eligible for compensation under the settlement. Deliberate intent by the hospitals to withhold the required notice and eligibility screening was established during the proceedings.

Documents submitted in the lawsuit indicate hospital staff were given incentives and talking points to help them get as much money as possible from low-income patients, and that they were directed not to mention charity care as an option unless a patient knew to specifically ask for it.

In August 2016, the advocacy groups Northwest Health Law Advocates ( NoHLA) and OneAmerica published a report Yakima Regional and Toppenish Hospitals Fail to Provide Sufficient Charity Care   based on their research which revealed the financial hardships suffered by patients who could have been eligible for charity care. Likewise it was found that

Yakima Regional Medical & Cardiac Center

……although Yakima Regional is the most profitable hospital in Central Washington, it provides a significantly lower level of charity care than the regional average.

 

 

 

As a sidebar note since the settlement was announced, the two hospitals are due to soon change hands , for the third time in fourteen years. In 2003, the pair was sold to Health Management Associates and subsequently in 2014 to Tennessee-based Community Health Associates, both for-profit hospital chains. Unlike in other parts of the country, for-profit hospitals are uncommon in Washington. Commitment to upholding the Charity Care Act is one of the conditions for Department of Health approval of a hospital’s conversion from nonprofit-to-for profit.

Across the state, full compliance with the long-standing financial assistance rules can remain still elusive.  In June 2016 a class-action lawsuit against Northwest Hospital in Seattle for Charity Care violations was filed. State legislators seeking a remedy filed HB 1359  and companion SB 5231 early this year, to require that a written notice of the availability of Charity Care be included on all hospital bills. The House bill made it through the first cut-off date, and is moving forward in the legislative process. I will be posting on new developments, including provisions in the bill to ensure that notices are given in the language that patients understand.

 

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“Hospitals Making Progress on Health Care Disparities”- Reading between the Lines

Posted in Advocacy, Discrimination, Ethics, Health Disparities, Healthcare Inequalities, Hispanic/Latino, Immigrants, Language Access, Language Services, Limited English Proficiency, Paitent safety, Patient Safety, Translation on 30 November 2014| Leave a Comment »

In recent weeks I’ve received email alerts announcing  “Hospitals Making Progress on Health Care Disparities“, a new study from the American Hospital Association’s Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence program and associated organizations.   I took a look  first at the infographic accompanying the notices, and then at the published study itself, the 2013 Diversity and Disparities: A Benchmark Study of U.S. Hospitals. It was no surprise to read that the demographic profile of hospital executives and boards is still so far from representative of  the general  population, since the last HPoE study in 2011. However, the 2013 study reports data on language services in hospitals that raised my eyebrows ( 2011 comparison data points shown in parentheses):   EquityofCareStudy

  • 95%  (90%) are collecting data on primary language of patients
  • 87% (80%) are translating forms and documents for patients
  • 66% (61%) collected information on patient language needs

Leaving aside the matter of ascertaining the difference between collecting “primary language of patient” and “patient language needs,” these highly encouraging results led me to seek details in the source report. Having recently done extensive research for my own presentation on the status of  language services in healthcare for the 2014 WASCLA Summit, the HPoE findings seemed even more amazing. What I found in the report itself , which did conclude that more needs to be done to achieve equity of care in the broader sense, was that some basic background and research points seemed not to have been included or were too limited in scope to be meaningful.  For example,  the report did not include the list of hospitals which had participated in the survey, nor how the recent cohort compares to the 2011 and 2009 participant groups. There was no discussion of the statistical validity of the response rate of 1109 hospitals (~19% of all 5922 AHA member hospitals invited to participate), nor how representative the response sample is for hospitals nationwide. For example, while the study noted that all data was self-reported,  there was no mention of the possibility that only hospitals which have disparities reduction initiatives chose to participate.  I am pursuing the actual data used for the study, and hope to have information to share soon.

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WA Healthplanfinder Updates

Posted in Advocacy, Assistance, Discrimination, Ethics, Global Health, Health Care Marketing, Health Care Reform, Health Disparities, Health Insurance, Health Literacy, Healthcare Inequalities, Hispanic/Latino, Immigrants, Language Access, Language Services, Limited English Proficiency, Medicaid, Promotions, State of Washington, Translation on 20 December 2013| Leave a Comment »

Consumer info fact sheets  translated into WA’s threshold written languages   (Chinese, Lao, Khmer ( Cambodian), Korean, Russian,  Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese) were posted on Dec. 16, just one week before the deadline to start an application for coverage to be effective Jan. 1, 2014. In an unrelated development, HBE  decided on this brief extension  for completing applications due to various  problems people have had in being able to use the online forms and or access phone customer services.  Regarding the translated fact sheets, it’s taken almost 6 months for their publication to replace the original problematic versions that were taken down from the site.
However, the new fact sheets are not easy to find as they are not posted on the consumer website,  but located exclusively on the HBE corporate website.  The corporate site features a line at top right-hand side of homepage entitled “Information in Other  Languages” which links to the fact sheets page, plus also links out to the consumer website.  In contrast, the consumer Healthplanfinder site (which is in both  English and Spanish) does not offer any such subject line, nor does it display a link to corporate site.  The Healthplanfinder site likewise does not contain any readily visible clear statement of consumer  language access or disability access rights, except for a message in tiny font on bottom of the homepage that says [sic] : If you need additional language or disability accomodations, you may call 1-855-WAFINDER (1-855-923-4633).   On the Spanish version of the website, this statement illustrates yet another example of  faulty translation, as the term “disability accomodation” is twice translated, and very ungrammatically, as  “discapacidad alojamiento”  which means disability lodging.  Sure enough, a quick check on Google Translate  English > Spanish reveals  “lodging” as the first  translation for “accommodation.”  Since 2012 advocates had been recommending the inclusion of multilingual tag lines and/or translated summaries sections for the website. Interpretersymbol

Information on some metrics for the Healthplanfinder call center became available last week with the release of the  November Healthplanfinder Data Report. On the language access side of things (p.10 of the report)  the numbers are not encouraging: the call center received almost 12,000 calls in Spanish, but handled only some 1600 of them. The call center in Spokane has bilingual Spanish-English staff (reported as 6 out of 80 employees at start-up) on site and routes calls in other languages to a telephonic interpreter service. For calls in all languages besides Spanish combined, 1045 were actually handled (answered)out of 3621 calls attempted. The report does not state if the multilingual calls are included in the totals for approximately 35,000 calls  handled in November or the almost  158,000 calls throttled (deflected from the system, i.e. not put into the queue to await a response).  While the HBE is said to be increasing staffing for the call center,  any increases planned for its language capacity are as yet unknown. Given the demand, it would seem that Spanish-speaking callers too could benefit from immediate access to interpreter services.

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Translations for WA Health Benefit Exchange Still a Struggle

Posted in Advocacy, Discrimination, Global Health, Health Care Marketing, Health Care Reform, Health Disparities, Health Insurance, Health Literacy, Healthcare Inequalities, Hispanic/Latino, Immigrants, Language Access, Language Services, Limited English Proficiency, Medicaid, State of Washington, Translation, tagged , , , , on 10 December 2013| Leave a Comment »

The irony was not lost for me that while writing on the positive results of the FDA’s use of  translation services, that here in my state, once known as a national leader in language services, we are still struggling to get quality translations for our Health Benefits Exchange (HBE).  The efforts  to achieve this goal have been a major focus for the Washington State Coalition for Language Access, and its been a year now since we co-authored with Northwest Health Law Advocates the report Language Access in Washington under the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act  expressly for the HBE efforts. Now with 175,000 enrollees, Washington State deserves the praise it’s getting for the record-breaking enrollment figures in the new health insurance  marketplace Washington Healthplanfinder, WA_Healthplanfinder_RGBespecially compared to the situation in neighboring Oregon and to the federal Healthcare.gov platform. But the picture is much less rosy regarding providing equal access for Washingtonians with limited English proficiency (LEP), who now number some 8% of state population or half-million residents, representing an increase of 210 % in the past decade . Demographic data on enrollees is said not to be available.

We are now less than 2 weeks away from the enrollment deadline for coverage to start Jan. 1, 2014, and the consumer fact sheets that were intended to inform the public of the options under the ACA have not yet been made available to Washington’s LEP population. Even though work began in July to replace the problematic original translations – errors brought to HBE’s attention by advocates- there are still no consumer fact sheets available in Washington’s  threshold languages ( in written form these are: Chinese, Lao, Khmer, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Somali, and Vietnamese).

In addition, the Spanish versions of the paper application for Healthplanfinder, while continuing to be publicly available, have contained horrific translation errors.  In the section  which inquires about the applicant’s citizenship status, the phrase ” Non-citizen legally present in the US”  was translated into Spanish to mean just the opposite,  i.e., the translation says “ non-citizen not legally present….”  ACA, complete with the  I-word in Spanish in version #1.  After the mistake was identified on Oct. 15 , again by advocates,  staff said they took immediate action to have the vendor correct it.  The screenshots included here show the sections containing the mistranslations.

Spanish version #1

And yet, advocates identified that the new translation contained the same error, just written with different wording.   Here is Spanish version #2, as it appeared on Nov. 14: Screen shot 2013-12-05 at 11.00.31 AM

This one particular error may now have been recently corrected  for a 3rd iteration, through volunteer  efforts of local language access advocates trying to beat the clock to help consumers. However, we hear anecdotally that more translation concerns persist and can’t be confident that there are not similar errors in the translations in the other languages.

What remains a mystery is how this sorry state of affairs has come about, and if there were ever robust quality assurance measures in the procurement chain for the translations. It is beyond comprehension how such blatant errors could be made given that the work was done by vendors holding official State contracts who must affirm that they use  qualified translators and proper translation procedures. And if this is happening in Spanish, the 2nd most used language in both our State and nationally,  and thus one for which there is an ample number of nationally-certified translators available to do the work, there is a real reason to fear that similar egregious errors may exist in other language translations.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, HBE staffers announced  at a meeting of its Health Equity Technical Advisory Committee, that work halted back in June to create a Language Access Plan  (LAP) for the HBE requested by the TAC , will resume in the new year.  LAPs are meant to serve as blueprints to guide the work of agencies and programs to comply with the laws requiring they provide language services, and  to help prevent the kind of  problems that we’ve being seeing here in the other Washington.  I’ll continue to report on the work in progress.

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Health Literacy Month–Still a Long Way to Go

Posted in Advocacy, Consumer Protection, Health Literacy, Language Access, Limited English Proficiency, Pharmacists, Prescription drugs on 21 October 2011| Leave a Comment »

I just learned that October is Health Literacy Month, via an article entitled  “Hospital discharge summaries are a health literacy issue” (a guest post by another physician) published on the KevinMD.com  blog.

(Background: this article had originally been posted on another blog called Engaging the Patient, sponsored by  Emmi Solutions, a healthcare communications firm which is promoting Health Literacy  Month.) 

The first paragraph described a patient as being a very elderly Filipino woman, and the article went on to explain how she had suffered some serious adverse effects because there was  a problem with how her Rx medicines had been prescribed.  Turned out that two of her meds had been combined into a single pill, a fact that was not apparent from the patient’s medication list.

But I was left wondering why the patient’s ethnicity was mentioned at all, since there was no discussion of any relevance to her health issues nor about if she had limited English skills, which also does not automatically track with ethnicity.  So I was surprised to read the following conclusion to the case study:

My hope is that this case illustrates the ways in which we might address health literacy issues using fail-proof systems-based approaches, rather than narrowly focusing our efforts on how we can build our patients’ capacity to interact with the health care system. Yes, teaching this patient to be a more fluent reader and to understand her prescription labels would have been ideal.

And we should have taught her to be more engaged and given her a phone number that she could call post-hospitalization to reach a Tagalog-speaking provider with questions about her discharge instructions or medications. But while we are working on engaging her with her care and teaching her to read prescription labels and providing enhanced communication support, let’s do what we can to “fix” the health literacy problem without involving Ms. Reyes at all.

Somehow the author made a non sequitur jump to depict the patient as  Limited English Proficient (LEP), but never once spoke of utilizing the services of  an interpreter at the hospital or if any  instructions had been translated for the patient.  It was likewise not mentioned that a pharmacist could have played an important role in the case. Seemingly this young physician knew nothing of the duties of the hospital to ensure communication between providers and patients, and is disseminating this scenario as typical.

So a response was in order.  I’m happy to say that my comments on the article were accepted for posting, and hope they will help make a dent.

My message for Health Literacy Month is that we need to seize the teachable moments.

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ACTION ALERT: Comments Needed on Important Language Access Standard by July 25

Posted in Advocacy, Consumer Protection, Discrimination, Economics of Health Care, Health Care Marketing, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Health Literacy, Language Access, Language Services on 20 July 2011| Leave a Comment »

Several national health advocacy groups have put out an alert about some key changes to language access standards that have just been proposed for the communication responsibilities of certain federal agencies which regulate private health care plans. As we move forward towards the enactment of health care reform, it is critical that  everyone, including LEP individuals, have the same rights to get access to to plan information and help with insurance appeals.  Health insurance is of course a critical part of access to health care and thus of any individual’s health status. Communication is an essential part of health and health care.  Lack of communication access causes both personal harm and contributes to health inequalities between population groups, plus drives up health care costs for people and systems.  If the new proposed standards are enacted, they would roll back current rules which private insurance companies must follow to ensure language access for plan beneficiaries.

What you can do: there is a very short window of opportunity now available for  individuals and organizations to voice their concerns by submitting comments online to the federal government via a dedicated website.  The deadline for submissions  is 2 p.m, PDT, on Monday July 25 !

For details about this critical issue, and instructions on how to submit comments along with suggested language, please read the following memo from the National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC), the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), and the National Health Law Program (NHeLP):

URGENT: Comments Needed on Important Language Access Standard

NSCLC, APALC and NHeLP asking advocates to submit by July 25

IMPORTANT: Please provide comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Labor (DOL) on proposed regulations governing private health care plans.  The regulations as proposed are a significant step backward from the version issued in 2010 and affect about 12 million individuals. They change the existing standards for oral interpretation and written translation in unprecedented ways. Please send in comments now and urge colleagues and networks to also take action.  

 The deadline for submitting comments to CMS on this proposed rule is 5 pm Eastern Time on Monday, July 25, 2011.

The National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC), the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), and the National Health Law Program (NHeLP) urge you to submit comments using the guidelines below. Then, please spread the word to your listservs, networks, colleagues, and affected beneficiaries, near and far, who may care about language access issues!

Issue:  CMS, IRS and the DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) have jointly issued regulations governing the internal claims and appeals and external review processes for private group health plans and health insurance issuers (note: this does not directly impact Medicare and Medicaid plans).

These rules were first promulgated as interim final regulations in June 2010, and were relatively strong. After industry complaints, they were amended as of July 2011, and significantly watered down. The public has this opportunity to comment.

Here are the three major language access issues relating to internal claims and appeals and external review:

  1. Written translations for group health plans: The threshold for determining whether translation of vital documents is required is set at: 10% of county population for group health plans. Formerly this was at 10% of plan participants in a given language or 500 persons, whichever is less; where a group plan has less than 100 participants, 25% was used.
  2. Written translations for individual plans: The threshold for this group is also 10% of county population. This was set based on the Medicare Part C and D marketing regulation (a proposal that has since been changed as of 4/15/11 to 5%, as a result of many persons submitting comments against the 10%).  
  3. Oral interpretation: Although it has been well settled that civil rights law mandates that oral interpretation should be provided in the health and health insurance contexts for all languages, the proposed regulations set a new precedent and require oral interpretation ONLY in the languages that meet the 10% threshold.  This is a major issue that needs to be addressed.

The new proposed standards completely fail to recognize the needs of the approximately 12 million limited English proficient individuals in the United States that are estimated to be affected by these regulations. Many of these individuals may receive marketing materials and calls in their primary languages, but will not be able to access plan review and appeals under the new rules. Even Spanish speakers will be left out in most of the country, as only 172 counties meet the 10% county population threshold for Spanish (out of 3,143 counties in the United States). Besides Spanish, the new proposed translation threshold is met by Navajo in 3 counties (1 county each in AZ, NM, UT), Tagalog in 2 counties (both in AK), and Chinese in one county (CA). Only 177 counties would require translated materials. Only one county in the entire nation would have translations in more than one language: the Aleutians West Census Area (population of 5,505 total persons) would have Spanish and Tagalog translations.

We need everyone – even advocates that don’t usually work on private insurance issues and those who have never commented on a federal rule – to take action now.

What You Can Do: 

1. FILE COMMENTS:

a)   Go to   www.regulations.gov

b)   Enter keyword or ID as “group plan” and hit the “SEARCH” button

c)   Scroll down and choose “Group Health Plans and Health Insurance Issuers: Internal Claims and Appeals and External Review Processes” and click on “submit a comment” on right side

d)   Although the regulation is proposed by three agencies, you only need to submit once. The agencies will share the information.

e)   Paste in the comments below and edit them, or write your own, then “Submit.”

f)   You are not required to fill out other fields, although it may be helpful to provide your affiliation. If you wish, you may be anonymous.   Comments submitted are viewable online (after a processing period) by the general public.

SAMPLE COMMENT:

On behalf of [organization/myself], I wish to comment on the 10% threshold for translation and oral interpretation of private plan materials in the internal review and appeals contexts. I am… [add 1-2 sentences about yourself, organization or work with LEP individuals].  The 10% standard is far too high.  A more appropriate standard would be “5% of the plan’s population or 500 persons in plan’s service area, whichever is less” for large group plans, and 25% of population for small plans. Oral interpretation should be provided in all languages at all times. {Consider adding information about the impact on your clients when they cannot get documents in a language that they understand.}

2. Forward this email to all of your contacts – other advocates, providers, interpreters, beneficiaries affected, and urge them to also file comments.  The more comments filed, the more CMS/IRS/EBSA are likely to pay serious attention to this issue.

3. If you are bilingual or work with LEP populations, consider having them file comments in other languages as well as in English, for impact.

For more information about commenting and the proposed regulations, see http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D= HHS-OS-2011-0019-0001 .

For more detailed information, see the comments that NHeLP and NSCLC will be submitting, available very shortly at www.nsclc.org and www.healthlaw.org .  Please feel free to submit detailed comments if you prefer.

Katharine Hsiao  khsiao@nsclc.org

Georgia Burke  gburke@nsclc.org

Kevin Prindiville kprindiville@nsclc.org

Mara Youdelman  youdelman@healthlaw.org

Doreena Wong dwong@apalc.org

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Headline Scan

Posted in Access to Medicines, Advocacy, Assistance, Children's Health, Economics of Health Care, Environmental Health, Ethics, Global Health, Health Care Marketing, Health Disparities, Health Insurance, Health Literacy, Healthcare Inequalities, Language Access, Recession, State of Washington, Workers' rights on 18 May 2011| Leave a Comment »

Can We Afford Personalized Medicine?

Special treatment for ‘high profile’ patients; exasperation for the rest of us

Health Insurers Making Record Profits as Many Postpone Care

People Who Donate Organs For Transplants Can Have Difficulty Getting Insurance

Foundations, Conflicts Of Interest And Drugmakers

Mission Crash: The Intolerable Policy Incoherence in US AIDS Policy, Global and Domestic

 Office of Minority Health Awards Major Project to Support
CCHI’s work on Healthcare Interpreter Certification

WA Governor signs precedent-setting healthcare worker safety laws

Washington is first state in nation to ban toxic pavement sealants

HHS awards $4.9 million to support families of children with special health care needs

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Glimmer of Hope: Senate Votes to Tap Life Sciences Discovery Fund for WA Basic Health Program, Continue Medical Interpreter Program

Posted in Advocacy, Discrimination, DSHS budget, Economics of Health Care, Ethics, Health Disparities, Healthcare Inequalities, Language Access, Language Services, Lobbying, State of Washington on 15 February 2011| Leave a Comment »

Things are still beyond grim as the work on Washington State’s  budget continues. However, on February 4, there was a more hopeful sign when the  Senate approved its version of the Supplemental Budget, including a provision to continue the Basic Health Program, although in reduced scope, by drawing on the Life Sciences Discovery Fund. The  LSDF was established in 2005 from WA’s share of national tobacco settlement funds.  Both the Governor’s budget and the one previously approved by the House had cut  BHP, along  with the DSHS long-standing  interpreter services program for  Medicaid and CHIP patients  These potentially promising developments however have garnered less attention than another set of proposals in HB 1847 ,which would  to sustain funding for BHP by eliminating tax exemptions for Big Banking,  and sales taxes on elective cosmetic surgery and private jets. 

While advocates regard these developments as positive, the struggle is far from over. The Supplemental budget is now undergoing the reconciliation process by both houses and will needs the Governor’s approval; the Biennial budget  will have its turn next. Both contain deep cuts in virtually every area of life affecting Washingtonians, with the worst cuts affecting the most vulnerable populations, especially immigrants and refugees. WA Budget cuts 2011.

The history of these two programs is of particular note at this critical time.  The original intent of the Master Tobacco Settlement Agreement was to fund health services in the states for those affected by smoking.  At the time, Gov. Gregoire, aware that the state would come into additional funds from that source by 2009, planned a move to combine them with private monies to develop a biotech sector.  In a  2005 commentary prescient of current threat of extinction for the Basic Health Program (which began as a 1987 pilot project and became permanent in 1993) the Seattle Weekly had reported:

It will be controversial because originally the tobacco settlement money was supposed to be used to help states offset the health care costs associated with smoking. In 2003, when Gary Locke floated an idea similar to the Life Science Discovery Fund—he called it Bio21—Senate Majority Leader Brown told Seattle Weekly she didn’t like the idea of using tobacco money for biotechnology. “We are one of the few states that has remained true to using that money for health care,” she said at the time. Expect the debate over the best use of the tobacco money to continue.

As I had written previously, in late October 2010, after the Governor had issued her call for “across the board budget cuts” from every state agency, the LSDF awarded $5 million to a private company engaged in personalized medicine research.  Last week, LSDF awarded $600,000 in commercialization grants to four research projects.

The Interpreter Services program also was created as a result of federal litigation, in this case as a result of a 1991 Consent Decree negotiated with the Office of Civil Rights in response to lawsuits and civil rights complaints filed against DSHS for failing to provide equal access to services for clients with limited English proficiency  By law, in this case the Civil Rights Act of 1964, title VI, recipients of federal funds must not discriminate against program beneficiaries on the basis of race, color, or national origin.  Courts have defined lack of language access as a form of discrimination based on national origin. However, the responsibility to fund language services is ultimately that of providers. Since  techncially Washington funded the DSHS program voluntarily, it is now able to seek to de-fund it, unlike other mandatory programs. But in doing so, the state would also forgo specific federal funds that it has been receiving that have covered 50-75% of the total costs, as the Washington State Coalition for Language Access explains in a fact sheet:  WASCLA DSHS Interpreter Services Talking Points January 2011

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Poor Journalism Fans Flames of Hate in the Evergreen State

Posted in Advocacy, Discrimination, DSHS budget, Economics of Health Care, Ethics, Health Disparities, Health Insurance, Healthcare Inequalities, Language Access, Lobbying, Recession, Responsible journalism, State of Washington on 4 February 2011| Leave a Comment »

A front-page article published on February 1 by  The Seattle Times, now the Emerald City’s  sole remaining daily newspaper, purporting to describe new state demographic trends, is causing outrage at a very critical time. At this very moment  the draconian cuts proposed by the Governor to balance the budget, are the subject of  contention in the Legislature  as advocates  struggle to convince lawmakers to preserve at least the semblance of a safety net .  The program cuts would disproportionately affect poor immigrants and refugees and communities of color, as the planned terminations cut deeply into a range of services from state food assistance, citizenship programs, Medicaid medical interpreter services, to health insurance plans which now cover noncitizen adults and some 27,000 children enrolled in the Children’s Health program of Apple Health for Kids, among other vital services.  In addition, other bills being considered would promote racial/ethnic profiling of state residents, including requiring citizenship checks of applicants for drivers’ licenses to those targeting youth for incarceration on the basis of presumed but not proven gang affiliations.

So it seems like more than a coincidence that the Times story Illegal-immigrant numbers in state jump 35% in 3 years was published the day before the Senate Ways & Means Committee was to hold a hearing on the 2011 Supplemental Budget bill which encompasses all of the cuts. The Times article discussed a just-released report from the Pew Hispanic Center  entitled Unauthorized Immigrant Population:
National and State Trends, 2010, about  results of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. Beyond  just the damage that the inflammatory  and dehumanizing language of the article’s title can cause in the court of public opinion , it turns out that reporter Lornet Turnbull  got his facts wrong too.  Subsequently Jeff Passel, one of the authors of the Pew report, was interviewed by a reporter for local radio station.   Passel said that based on the Census data, there was no evidence that Washington’s undocumented population had increased, pointing to the high margin of error in the data analysis and its very small sample size, and more pointedly, that the Seattle Times had not done fact-checking with Pew.  The  Feb. 3 interview Dispute About Growth Of Undocumented Immigrants In Wash. can be heard in its entirety on the KUOW website.

In these desperate economic times, articles like this one in the Seattle Times serve only to scapegoat all immigrants for the economic woes of the state (and the nation) instead of focusing on the genuine causes of the recession.  Over 400 comments  have been posted in response so far, most of them of a hate-mongering nature.  Recognition that Washington’s regressive tax structure means that all of us contribute at the same (sales tax) rate to state coffers, regardless of immigration status or income, is handily overlooked by the ranters. Interestingly, the Times has posted a partial correction to the article, explaining that undocumented people constitute a small  fraction of the state’s population

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that illegal immigrants accounted for nearly 5 percent of the state’s population, giving Washington the seventh highest rate of illegal immigrants in the nation. A Pew Hispanic Center report, on which the story was based, incorrectly attributed the percentage and ranking to Washington state rather than to the District of Columbia. The center has corrected the information in its online report to reflect that illegal immigrants comprise 3.4 percent of Washington state’s population, a rate that does not rank it among the top 10 states.

The story’s problematc title and other content inaccuracies however remain the same, its damage done.  Use of attention-grabbing headlines is a journalistic technique of course; likewise  fewer readers ever bother to go back to read corrections.

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Lumps of Coal for Local Health, Buzz and Bucks for Biotech and Global Health

Posted in Access to Medicines, Assistance, DSHS budget, Economics of Health Care, Ethics, Global Health, Health Disparities, Healthcare Inequalities, Language Access, Lobbying, Recession, State of Washington on 3 January 2011| Leave a Comment »

The end of the year with its annual holidays found many  of us here in Washington State feeling anything but in a festive mood, given the imminent decimation of core health and human services, as part of  the Governor’s proposal for balancing of the state’s  budget in the new year and for the biennium.  On September 13th, Governor Gregoire’s Executive Order 10-04 instructed all state agencies to make reductions in their allotments from the State General fund in order to meet the requirement for a balanced  budget. On September 29, DSHS issued its initial plan of how the 6.3% across-the-board budget cuts would be applied to Department programs to meet this mandate. The proposed cuts were aimed at every program and service (included some entirely state-funded and other linked to Medicaid)  not technically defined as “mandatory,” affecting the state’s most vulnerable populations in all age-groups from pre-cradle to grave, and including  primary care delivered at community health centers.

By December, a supplemental budget proposal with even worse news was issued, containing further  proposals for achieving the needed $4 billion in savings to balance the budget. The drastic cuts to almost every aspect of civic life, was driven by outcomes of  ballot measures  from the November elections, which dashed any hopes even of short-term new revenue generation  from snack sales, rejection of a first-ever state income tax to have been levied only on the wealthiest among us, and hamstrung future legislative efforts to raise taxes with the 2/3 majority approval stipulation.  By December 30, the Governor released the latest list of planned budget cuts,and the timeline for their elimination. While some of the worst of the cuts have been staved off or delayed temporarily, it still remains to be seen whether the remaining services will be funded, even in vastly reduced mode, and how many human beings affected by the cuts will even survive.

While at this stage in my life nothing surprises me any more, the discrepancy between what is happening to these most basic of services and the treatment of the high-profile, socially attractive high tech sector by state government should be a wake up call to all of us who value a decent society. While the majority of Washingtonians have not misbehaved, it seems like the most vulnerable among us are being singled out for punishment.

State Dollars > Private Venture

During exactly same time period that the budget cuts were first announced in October, another state agency, the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, gave a grant of $5 million to a private, for-profit business, the Omeros Corporation, a Seattle biopharmaceutical company, for  research into speculative personalized medicines. The grant to Omeros was rolled into a package deal for the firm, that included $25M from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital. Even Xconomy: Seattle‘s biotech reporter Luke Timmerman expressed great surprise at this development in his Dec. 14 article entitled Life Sciences Discovery Fund Debunks Perceptions with Omeros Deal, Shows State Can Bankroll Companies. If the research ever pans out, then there is the possibility of financial returns to the state at some unknown time in the future.

A bit of background: Washington’s Life Sciences Discovery Fund was established by the Legislature in 2005 to disburse the tobacco settlement funds allocated to the state. While the the fund originally had been allocated $350M for a 10-year period, when the State’s budget crisis threatened to shut down the program in 2009, it survived with a budget cut of 41% or $39M in funds for FYs 2009-2011. The LSDF’s  stated mission is as follows:

The Life Sciences Discovery Fund supports innovative research in Washington state to promote life sciences competitiveness, enhance economic vitality, and improve health and health care.

which the  program website further explains as intending to “foster growth of the state’s life sciences sector and improve the health and economic wellbeing of its residents.”

But given the crisis situation we now face–in context of course of the ongoing national recession–emergency measures are needed.  It hardly seems the time for state government to be investing in private companies, purely ethical issues aside for the moment. Obviously, it’s going to take more than redirecting the “mere” $5M given by the LSDF to a private venture to save public health services in Washington State, but those funds certainly could have turned things around for a good number of the axed programs, such as the Basic Health Program insurance plan and so many Medicaid services.  While research is important, without access to care, medical innovations are meaningless.  What good is research, if there is no safety net? Given the LSDF’s mission, it should be part of the logical solution needed  now: making sure that all Washingtonians can benefit from the medical knowledge available today. And the state government can take a leadership role too in education on the need for investment in our human capital. Despite laments over the election outcomes,and grim prognostics, the official ChooseWashington.com website continues to highlight the array of attractive tax incentives, some of which I had commented on previously, for certain types of companies to set up shop here, along with the absence of a personal income tax.

Another part of the Governor’s plan to balance the budget, announced December 14, is to eliminate Boards and Commissions. No mention was made in this announcement, however, about the status of  a brand-new board, the Global Health Technologies Competitiveness Board established in July 2010, after SB 6675 Creating the Washington global health technologies and product development competitiveness program and allowing certain tax credits for program contributions, was approved by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Gregoire. Per RCW 43.374.010, among the Board’s charges are seeking funding from the private sector, foundations, and the federal government in order to issue grants to local enterprises …to stimulate our economy and foster job creation in the emerging field of global health while improving the health of people in our state and the world. The program is required to be administered by a 501(c)6 tax-exempt nonprofit organization, which contracts with the Dept. of Commerce for administrative services.

The Global Health Technologies Competitiveness Program (GHTCP) was awarded $1M by the Legislature (evidently not subject to the budget cuts) and issued its first RFP in mid-November, with awards expected to be announced early in the new year, along with a second RFP announcement, according to the Washington Global Health Alliance.

Think Globally, Act Locally ?

These new developments beg the question of just exactly what these specific state-funded programs are doing to improve the health  of Washington residents in the here and now. I write these words from the perspective of understanding full well how domestic and  international health are inextricably linked, whether regarding diseases rapidly transcending national borders or concerning the impact of international trade agreements on availability of medicines for US Medicaid programs, just to name a few examples. I myself am alive today partly as a result of medical advances developed here in Seattle, and I am also directly involved with both local and global health equity work, which makes me even more appalled at what is going on. Global health has been described as Seattle’s “next hot industry,” but few are the public voices applying critical thinking skills to analyze what this actually means for local folks. One of the exceptions is that of Seattle journalist Tom Paulson, who now offers insights on his Humanosphere blog.  such as a November 2010 story on a still-vague, 5-year  $1M  Swedish Medical Center pilot project called Global to Local targeting two low-income communities in  South King County.  Tom pointed out the irony  of this program being rolled out at the very same time that well-established and proven-effective, public health services are being slashed. According to the article, G2L is based on a concept that the “best practices” used by local actors in overseas health programs can be applied here at home too, while structural reasons for domestic health and healthcare inequalities are not addressed. And another observer, Steve Gloyd, MD of Health Alliance International and the UW Dept. of Global Health, has opined that there can be an upside to calling global health an “industry”:

“Maybe using the word will shock people into recognizing that when a local biotech firm says it is working on a vaccine to help people in Africa, some will see it is actually just trying to make a few people in Seattle rich.”

Next year, a new nonprofit called Global Health Nexus will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair with a major conference and exhibition showcasing the region’s global-health advancements. One has to wonder if anyone working to improve health at the local level will be invited to present, or if we’ll be able to afford the registration fees. Perhaps advocates can submit an abstract for a session there featuring real-life Washingtonians sharing first-hand accounts of the outcomes of state budget cuts on preventable health problems, such as  a child who has  been experiencing asthma attacks since elimination of the Children’s Health Program; an adult with diabetes who had to get their leg amputated due to lack of non-emergency podiatry care;  or the relative of a patient who died due to a wrong diagnosis resulting from lack of a medical interpreter;  or we could show  videos of overflowing ERs full of patients bumped from the Basic Health Program and unable to be seen at community clinics. Then maybe we could pass the hat among the rich and famous to take to up a collection for local health.

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