LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – State law allows for residents in declared emergency areas to fill prescriptions at available pharmacies, even if it is not where your prescription is on file.
Below is a list of open pharmacies, any of which will be able to accommodate emergency requests.
Please bring your medication bottle(s) and/or the actual medication with you to help the pharmacist fill your prescription.
The pharmacist will contact your physician for confirmation.
Please call the pharmacy directly for hours of operation and more information:
– Lake Pharmacy, 15230 Lakeshore Drive, Clearlake, 707-994-3141. – Moran’s Pharmacy, 15175 Lakeshore Drive, Clearlake, 707-994-6440. – Rite Aid Pharmacy, 15025 Olympic Drive, Clearlake, 707-994-8677. – Walmart Pharmacy, 15960 Dam Road, Clearlake, 707-994-1671. – Coyote Valley Pharmacy, 18990 Coyote Valley Road, Suite 2, Hidden Valley Lake, 707-987-8502. – Kelseyville Pharmacy, 3720 Main St., Kelseyville, 707-279-1561. – Lucerne Pharmacy, 6244 East Highway 20, Lucerne, 707-274-6643.
FAIRFIELD, Calif. – Partnership HealthPlan of California, which administers Medi-Cal benefits in 14 Northern California counties, is expanding services to its members affected by the fires in Shasta, Trinity, Lake and Mendocino counties.
“It is unfortunate that these devastating fires are happening all too frequently,” said PHC CEO Liz Gibboney. “In response, we have launched our community emergency response plans that will allow our members to more easily access care in these difficult times.”
During this crisis, PHC is working with doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, and health centers to ensure that members have access to their medications or medical care regardless of whether they are able to reach their assigned pharmacy or primary care physician.
Affected PHC members are encouraged to:
· Call Member Services at 800-863-4155 if they need help locating a doctor or pharmacy; if their medication, medical equipment, or medical supplies were lost or damaged in the fire, or if their regular pharmacy is closed due to the fire. (Members can use any pharmacy that is open. Outside of their home counties, members can use most pharmacies, including those in grocery stores and chain stores such as CVS, Rite Aid, Wal-Mart and Walgreens.)
· Call PHC’s 24-Hour Advice Nurse line at 866-778-8873 if they need to speak to a nurse and are unable to reach their doctor.
· Call Beacon Health Options at 855-765-9703 for mental health services.
Additionally, PHC opened its doors at its Redding Avtech location to United Way of Northern California, or UWNC, who had been evacuated from their Redding office. This community partnership allowed UWNC to continue to keep vital 2-1-1 services fully operational and begin to raise funds to assist fire victims.
PHC is a nonprofit community-based health care organization that contracts with the state to administer Medi-Cal benefits through local care providers. PHC provides quality health care to more than 555,700 Medi-Cal members in to 14 Northern California counties.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – While Sutter Lakeside Hospital and Sutter Care at Home offices in Lakeport remain closed due to the Mendocino Complex fires, clinical team members are making every effort to reschedule patients with immediate needs at nearby facilities.
Clinical team members are contacting patients with immediate treatment needs first to discuss various alternatives for care. They will contact patients with non-immediate treatment needs soon thereafter.
“This is a very fluid situation, as the Mendocino Complex fires continue to be unpredictable,” said Dan Peterson, chief administrative officer for Sutter Lakeside Hospital. “We are working very hard to connect with patients and are committed to providing them the latest information.”
Sutter Lakeside Hospital has been threatened by the Mendocino Complex fires since Saturday afternoon.
The hospital evacuated twice in two days. As a result, hospital staff has canceled patient appointments, including the community clinic, imaging and other services through this week.
While the hospital is closed, a small administrative and security team remains onsite to monitor the campus.
The Sutter Care at Home staff in Lakeport, Calif. continues to reach out to patients to assess their healthcare needs and to ensure each patient has the medical supplies they need.
The health and safety of patients, staff, clinicians and community are the highest priority. Sutter Health continues to coordinate efforts with local emergency officials and is closely monitoring this situation as it unfolds.
Sutter is actively supporting employees and physicians in this time of need with financial aid and other emergency assistance, but also recognizes the importance of supporting the greater community.
The not-for-profit health network made a $100,000 donation to the American Red Cross California Wildfires Fund, which will help bring food, water and emergency shelter to families in need.
Close to four million Americans would gain health insurance, and premium costs would drop an average of nearly 12 percent, if every state joined Massachusetts and New Jersey in enacting state-level individual mandates.
These mandates would replace the Affordable Care Act’s penalty for not having health insurance, a fee that Congress eliminated, effective 2019.
That’s according to a new Commonwealth Fund/Urban Institute report by the Urban Institute’s Linda Blumberg, Matthew Buettgens, and John Holahan examining what would happen if all states adopted their own individual insurance mandates.
The ACA requires most Americans to enroll in an insurance plan or pay a financial penalty – a move intended to stabilize insurance markets by encouraging healthy people to purchase and stay enrolled in a health plan.
Now that the mandate penalty will be eliminated as of January 2019, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that premiums will increase and more people will lose their insurance coverage.
But if states acted on their own to replace the federal mandate, the new report finds that, compared with having no mandate:
– Millions more people would gain health insurance. Implementing state individual mandates across the country in 2019, when the federal penalties are lifted, would reduce the number of uninsured by 3.9 million – a decrease of 11.4 percent. In 2022, there would be 7.5 million fewer uninsured Americans.
– Premiums would drop by an average of nearly 12 percent. If all states adopted an individual mandate, marketplace premiums would fall by an average of 11.8 percent. The impact would vary across states, depending on how many healthy people reenroll in the marketplaces. The larger the share of healthy enrollees in individually purchased plans today, the greater the impact on premium rates. In New Mexico, premiums would decrease by more than 20 percent, and they would drop by 15 percent or more in Colorado, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Nevada, North Dakota, Washington, and West Virginia.
– Montana, West Virginia, North Dakota, and Kentucky would see the largest uptakes, percentage-wise, in coverage. Mandates in these states would reduce the number of uninsured residents by more than 20 percent, as more people enroll in individually purchased plans, Medicaid, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program. In California, 389,000 people would gain coverage under a state mandate.
– Uncompensated care costs would decline dramatically. When patients are uninsured and can't pay their medical bills, state and federal governments, as well as physicians, hospitals, and community health centers, absorb the costs of this uncompensated care. As more people gain coverage under state mandates, demand for uncompensated care would fall by $11.4 billion nationally, the new report finds. In Texas, uncompensated care costs would fall by $1.2 billion; in California, by $892 million; in Florida, by $747 million; and, in Georgia, by $548 million.
“Although the repeal of the individual mandate penalty will have negative effects across our health care system, states can act to keep their health insurance markets stable and affordable by offsetting the expected coverage losses and premium increases beginning in 2019,” said Linda Blumberg, an author of the study and Institute Fellow in the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute.
“Because of the ACA, more people have health insurance than ever before, and people with health problems can’t be denied coverage or charged more because of their condition,” said David Blumenthal, M.D., Commonwealth Fund president. “With the repeal of the individual mandate penalty, this report shows how states can exercise their own authorities to reduce the number of uninsured and make insurance more affordable for their residents.”
The report outlines the additional benefits of individual mandates for state economies. These include:
– Increased flow of federal dollars: With the passage of state-level mandates, the flow of federal dollars would increase to 27 states plus the District of Columbia, as more people enroll in Medicaid or take advantage of marketplace premium tax credits. In 21 states, federal spending would decline slightly under a mandate as a result of lower marketplace premiums and the consequent decrease in average premium subsidies.
– Increased state revenue: If every state implemented mandates effective in 2019, 8.8 million families would pay financial penalties to their state department of revenue for not complying with the law, amounting to $7.4 billion. Average penalties per family would range from a low of $630 in West Virginia to a high of $1,270 in Delaware.
By legislating comparable mandate penalties, states can mitigate the negative coverage and premium effects caused by eliminating the ACA’s individual mandate in 2019.
Massachusetts, for example, legislated its own individual mandate in 2006 and New Jersey did so this year. Legislation has also been considered, but did not pass, in Maryland, Hawaii, and Connecticut.
In the District of Columbia, an individual mandate passed as part of a larger budget bill and is expected to be signed by the mayor. However, there are riders to the D.C. budget in the U.S. House of Representatives intended to inhibit implementation, although it is not clear they would be successful.
The study’s authors note that state-level mandates face significant challenges.
Some states, for example, do not have state income taxes, and new financial structures would have to be developed to collect individual mandate penalties.
Other state political environments are not conducive to enacting individual mandate legislation, even in states where governors and state policymakers generally support the ACA.