How Obamacare Is Changing the ER

Our Hospital Emergency Room Sees 400 Uninsured Patients Each Month. My Job Is to Get Them Covered.

Every month, nearly 400 people without health insurance visit the emergency department of the San Jose hospital where I work. Some of them come in after an accident. Others have chronic health problems but have nowhere else to go—their primary care physician is basically the emergency room.

In the past, all we could do for many of these patients was offer them a quick fix: bandage them, take away their pain, and send them on their way. Most of these patients were low-income but didn’t qualify for Medi-Cal, the federal-state program …

Obamacare Is Turning Us Into a Better Hospital

Thousands of Newly Insured Patients Are Making Our Medical Center More Efficient and Creative

The holidays are a convenient time to take stock of our blessings and opportunities, and to consider the challenges we have overcome in the previous year. As I reflect back, …

If You Want to Make Sense of Obamacare, Go to San Diego

America's Finest City Just Might Offer the Country's Finest Chance at Successful Health Reform

Will San Diego have America’s finest Obamacare?

Yes, it’s way too early for any verdicts about the Affordable Care Act and its implementation, even in California, which has embraced this messy …

The Inland Empire Will Do Just About Anything to Insure You

In a Massive, Highly Diverse Region, Getting People Healthcare Means Getting Creative

If you build it, they won’t come. So you’ve got to go to them. This was the big takeaway from the first year of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in …

Dances with Obamacare

A Year of Major Illnesses and Expenses Has Our Family Playing a Game of Musical Chairs with Changing Doctors and Health Plans

At the exact moment President-elect Barack Obama proclaimed that “change has come to America,” I stood at the foot of my husband’s bed in the cardiac ICU of Mission Hospital …