I recently sat down with Kevin Hirsch, MD, President of Scripps Coastal Medical Group* to talk about health reform and transformation in the San Diego region. (See video below.)

Dr. Hirsch’s insights are interesting and timely because California often precedes the rest of the country in adopting new approaches to healthcare delivery and financing problems.  An example of this may be California’s 2006 Hospital Fair Pricing Act, which addressed very high hospital bills for the uninsured. This month’s Health Affairs includes an article that analyzes the impact of this law, and the authors’ findings contrast markedly with Steven Brill’s Time magazine article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us.”

The California law is a significant step, and the Health Affairs authors describe it as a “detailed and well-structured approach.” The Act did have  limitations: it only protects uninsured people with incomes under 350% of the FPL, the state has minimal enforcement activities, and it only covers hospital bills and not those from physicians or outside services. (Note: In 2011 the law was expanded to include bills from ED physicians.)

Since the ACA will leave many people without health insurance, the Health Affairs authors conclude, “Policy makers and health planners in other states searching for options to protect the uninsured should be encouraged by our findings and should seek to learn more about California’s approach and determine how they might adapt similar laws to their own state’s health care system.”

(Disclosure: I’ve known Dr. Hirsch for many years – and aside from out obvious East Coast-West Coast attire differences, we continue to share a similar hairstyle and are both working to improve healthcare quality and efficiency.)

*Scripps Coastal Medical Group includes more than 140 family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, physical medicine and rehabilitation, rheumatology and general surgery clinicians practicing throughout San Diego County, and exclusively provides medical services through Scripps Health, a nonprofit integrated health system, under the Scripps Coastal Medical Centers brand.