Fact sheet from UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Public health officials in California are seeking to renew the state’s Section 1115 waiver to secure $10 billion in federal reimbursement for Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reports.

California’s current Medi-Cal waiver is scheduled to expire at the end of August. The state’s Department of Health Care Services, which manages Medi-Cal, is in negotiations with CMS over the terms of a waiver extension.

With fewer places to turn, mental health patients are overwhelming Sacramento County emergency rooms– increasing wait times, straining law enforcement and exposing the limited ability of ERs to deal with serious mental disorders.  Read the SacBee article by Bobby Caina Calvan and Phillip Reese.

New publications from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured look at important Medicaid benefits and enrollment issues stemming from the reform law.

Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly ruled that the county has a duty to provide for emergency medical care for the indigent. The judge, however, stopped short of saying how much the county owes UC Davis.   Read more in the Sac Bee article by Robert Lewis.

The weak economy is crippling the government program that provides life-sustaining antiretroviral drugs to people with H.I.V. or AIDS who cannot afford them.  Read the New York Times article.

California‘s Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board has started accepting names of people with pre-existing conditions who are interested in applying for a new high-risk health insurance pool that will be funded by the federal government and run by the state, the Sacramento Bee reports.

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a business-led challenge to a universal health care program in San Francisco that has enrolled more than 53,000 people who lacked health insurance.  Read the Associated Press article by JULIANA BARBASSA.

Minority patients in need of mental health services face unique challenges in seeking such services.   Legal Services of Northern California has identified such disparities in the County mental health program.

Millions of California adults lack dental insurance because of job losses or insufficient access to dental benefits, the Sacramento Bee reports.