Medical Care

A core tenet of the healthcare overhaul President Obama is pushing through Congress is that medical care can be improved -- and costs contained -- if the country relies more on experts to determine which procedures and treatments work best. But Monday's mammography report by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force delivered a swift and stark reminder that few ideas are more explosive in healthcare. The expert panel -- which recommended that women in their 40s should no longer get annual mammograms to screen for breast cancer -- sparked an outcry from those who say that the federal government is more interested in saving money than in improving women's health, even though the panel did not consider costs in its analysis.

Health insurance giant WellPoint Inc. reported an 8% drop in first-quarter profit, reflecting lower membership and higher costs. The nation's second-largest health insurer, after UnitedHealth Group Inc., runs Anthem Blue Cross in California and plans in 13 other states. It reported net income of $856.5 million, or $2.53 a share, for the three months ended March 31, compared to net of $926.6 million, or $2.44 a share, a year ago. Revenue grew 4% to $15.42 billion in the quarter.

reporting from san fernando, philippines Rey Torres dreamed of a better life for his wife and five children when he left a neighborhood of wooden shacks and burning trash piles to drive a bus on a U.S. military base near Baghdad. He hoped to send his children to college and build a new home with the $16,000 a year he earned in Iraq -- four times what he could make in the Philippines. Then, in April 2005, Torres, 31, was killed in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents. His widow and children were supposed to be protected by a war zone insurance system overseen by the U.S. government.

SACRAMENTO — Officials Monday announced an overhaul of California prisons that would cut spending by billions of dollars, cancel some construction projects, close one lockup and bring back 9,500 inmates housed in other states — all while meeting court orders to reduce crowding and improve medical care. If state lawmakers and federal judges sign off on the proposals, California's long-troubled prison system would look significantly different by 2016 — smaller, cheaper and more autonomous.

After months of impasse, Blue Shield of California and UCLA finally have a proposal on the table to settle a contract dispute that's caused worry and confusion for thousands of patients seeking treatment at one of the state's premier medical facilities. But don't expect a breakthrough any time soon. The two sides remain far apart over how much Blue Shield should pay for members' visits to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood and the nearby Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital.

SACRAMENTO — Officials Monday announced an overhaul of California prisons that would cut spending by billions of dollars, cancel some construction projects, close one lockup and bring back 9,500 inmates housed in other states — all while meeting court orders to reduce crowding and improve medical care. If state lawmakers and federal judges sign off on the proposals, California's long-troubled prison system would look significantly different by 2016 — smaller, cheaper and more autonomous.

First came the Mexican consular photo identification cards that closely resembled U.S. driver's licenses and allowed immigrants, including those in the country illegally, to establish credit and apply for government services. Then the Mexican government worked with the Treasury Department to make sure the U.S. banking system remained open to immigrants. Now Mexican consulates in the U.S. are taking on an even more formidable challenge: the healthcare system.

No doctor was waiting on the sideline when JaVion Hartford limped off the field in the second quarter. No trainer came over to examine his painful right knee. No one hurried to bring him ice. The linebacker from tiny Animo Leadership High sat alone on the bench until an assistant coach checked on him, followed a while later by the head coach, who could only guess that Hartford had suffered a hyperextension. "Don't try to be a hero," Coach Jamar Hamilton told him. "I don't want you to play.

Laura Gagliardi awoke from a coma on her 17th birthday, three months after she suffered traumatic brain injury in a car accident. It was an event her family and doctors had hoped for but did not expect. Gagliardi had arrived at the hospital unconscious and unresponsive. But rather than battling to keep the teenager out of a coma, Dr.

As Tim Harkrider extends his right hand, the ring commemorating a minor league baseball team's championship sparkles in the sunshine. He wears the ring proudly, despite its Angel logo. "I don't hate them," he said. He is, however, suing them. In a lawsuit filed in his home state of Texas, Harkrider, 28, charges the Angels with inferior medical care that prevented him from recovering from an ankle injury, regaining his status as a top prospect and, ultimately, playing in the major leagues.

After months of impasse, Blue Shield of California and UCLA finally have a proposal on the table to settle a contract dispute that's caused worry and confusion for thousands of patients seeking treatment at one of the state's premier medical facilities. But don't expect a breakthrough any time soon. The two sides remain far apart over how much Blue Shield should pay for members' visits to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Westwood and the nearby Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital.

As prisons go, the detention center that opened in southern Texas last week may be a pleasant surprise for illegal immigrants and others awaiting possible deportation. Behind tall walls, the grassy compound offers inmates a salad bar, a library with Internet access, cable TV, an indoor gym with basketball courts, and soccer fields. Instead of guards, unarmed "resident advisors" patrol the grounds in polo shirts and khakis. It is a far cry from the grim and sometimes dangerous county lockups and local jails that hold most immigration detainees across the country.

Orange County and Ventura outpaced Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Bakersfield in a national score card looking at how area hospitals, doctors and insurance companies manage patient care and costs. The Commonwealth Fund, a New York foundation that studies the U.S. healthcare market, ranked 306 communities nationwide on key areas of health system performance, such as whether patients are getting timely preventive care and avoiding unnecessary hospital stays and whether healthcare is affordable.

A Ventura County commission is trying to keep secret the details of a state-ordered investigation into the management and claims procedures of a healthcare plan designed to serve the county's neediest residents. Complaints about alleged late payments and poor management prompted the Department of Health Care Services to request that auditors step in and examine the plan's financial condition and claims practices. Gold Coast Health Plan was launched last year to switch an estimated 110,000 Ventura County Medi-Cal beneficiaries into an HMO-style healthcare plan.  Previously, doctors and hospitals were free to charge Medi-Cal directly on a fee-for-service basis.

California's largest health insurers are raising average rates by about 8% to 14% for hundreds of thousands of consumers with individual coverage, outpacing the costs of overall medical care. The cost of goods and services associated with medical care grew just 3.6% over the last 12 months nationally, government figures show. But insurance premiums have kept climbing at a faster pace in California. Insurers defended their rate hikes, saying they are based on their claims experience with the customers they insure and not just the broader rate of medical inflation.

Reporting from San Quentin -- Fifteen years ago, Jackie Clark was so disgusted with the healthcare at San Quentin prison that she quit her job there as a nurse consultant. "We didn't have sinks. We didn't have appropriate medical equipment," she recalled recently. "We were in converted offices and converted cells. " The care there and elsewhere in California's overcrowded lockups was so poor that in 2006 a federal judge, saying that an inmate was dying unnecessarily every week, put a receiver in charge of the health system.

Just over a year ago, 16-month-old Delaney Lucille Gonzalez walked with her family into UCLA Medical Center for routine surgery to repair a cleft palate. Three days later, she was disconnected from life support and died in her mother's arms. "To bring a healthy child in there for surgery so minor," her mother, Jodi, said recently, clutching a headband she had made for Delaney, "you just don't accept that she's going to die."

A new state program that went into effect this month requires HMOs and health insurance plans to provide free, comprehensive annual physicals to millions of New Jersey adults. The New Jersey Health Wellness Promotion Act, described as the first of its kind in the nation, requires many insurers to provide a 17-point "Healthful Life Program" aimed at encouraging more healthful living and catching problems early. Already, creator Dr. Donald B.

A Rowland Heights physician who previously had been accused of recklessly prescribing addictive painkillers was linked Thursday to the deaths of three patients, according to state medical board documents. Dr. Lisa Tseng prescribed powerful narcotics after little to no examination of three men, all in their 20s, who died after overdosing on the types of drugs she prescribed to them, the Osteopathic Medical Board of California alleged in a new accusation made public Thursday. A Times investigation published in 2010 identified eight former patients — including the three named in the accusation — who fatally overdosed on the types of drugs Tseng prescribed.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cureorganization made a premature and unfortunate decision to sever ties with Planned Parenthood, a move that already appears to be coming back to haunt the breast cancer-fighting foundation. As a private nonprofit, of course, Komen has every right to decide how to spend its money. Until now, it has given Planned Parenthood, which is better known as a provider of contraception and abortions, more than $500,000 a year to perform breast exams and provide related outreach for low-income women, as well as referrals for mammograms.