Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

California hospitals will not get the major cash infusion they had been hoping for from the state to pay for infrastructure improvements. Democrats had sought to include money for hospital improvements in the $42 billion to $45 billion bond measure that state residents will vote on this summer. Hospitals had wanted money to pay for seismic retrofitting upgrades. Under an agreement between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and lawmakers, the provision has been dropped. California …

The state of California will file a legal challenge against the federal government's new prescription drug plan, the state's attorney general said yesterday. The suit will argue that the new benefit is failing to deliver needed medicines to participants and that it could end up costing California as much as $750 million over the next three years. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who faces a tough election campaign this year after a disappointing 2005, ordered the suit, saying yesterday that …

> Search engine company Healthline, which won itself New York Times coverage earlier this week, is back in the news, announcing it has won $14 million in series A funding. The round was led by VantagePoint Venture Partners. Article

> More legal problems surface for ex-HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy as a grand jury hears …

States continue to report problems with the Medicare Part D roll out which began Jan. 1. On Thursday, California became the latest to take action, as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law legislation guaranteeing an emergency supply of medicines for those unable to get their prescription. With problems far more widespread than had been predicted, criticism of the program is building. Media coverage has been particularly harsh even in outlets traditionally sympathetic to the …

California will spend nearly $400 million on telemedicine programs for the University of California system as part of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's $222 billion plan to upgrade the state's infrastructure. Schwarzenegger announced the plan last week in his state of the state address. Schwarzenegger also said he supports the re-importation of prescription drugs into the country from Canada as a way of keeping drug costs down. The position is a reversal for Schwarzenegger, who supported the …

In California, hospitals are scrambling to comply with the state's new nurse staffing requirements after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger abandoned his effort to block a law that requires hospitals to maintain a 1-to-5 nurse-to-patient ratio. Companies that specialize in nurse staffing are pulling out all the stops to recruit new talent. Access Nurses has rented a mansion in Newport Beach to entertain new recruits. The company is airing a reality-TV style show that highlights the joys of nursing in Southern California. Article

The powerful California Nurses Association is reveling in the defeat it helped hand Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in last week's special election. Now, it appears that the nurses have won the fight which initially caused relations between the governor and nurses groups to deteriorate in the first place. On Thursday, Schwarzenegger's administration abandoned its effort to legally block new staffing rules which will require hospitals to hire more nurses to meet minimum nurse-to-patient …

In a little over a week from now, there's a special election in California
with several propositions on the ballot mostly to do with the political
future of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But the two initiatives to do with drug
pricing (Props. 78 and 79) have seen an out-pouring of money, almost all of
it from drug companies. Their "Yes on 78, No on 79" commercials …

Hospitals in California said they are willing to obey a new state law which requires them to publish lists of their 25 most common inpatient and outpatient procedures. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger officially signed Assembly Bill 1045 last week. A similar bill passed in 2003 but produced mixed results. Critics say the earlier law wasn't specific enough about the data hospitals are required to publish and the ways in which they are required to publish it. As a result, some hospitals released …

> The Nobel Prize in Medicine has been awarded to a pair of Australian researchers who discovered that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori--not stress--is responsible for most ulcers. Article

> A new Deloitte survey finds hospital CEOs to be "guardedly optimistic" about their financial future. Release

> In Toronto there …