State highlights: What makes former CMS head Berwick, now Mass. gov. candidate, tick; Calif. set to get health law long-term care money

A selection of health policy stories from Massachusetts and California.

WBUR: What Makes Berwick Run: Spurned Medicare Chief Seeks To Lead Massachusetts
Dr. Don Berwick -- pediatrician, health care improvement guru, Anglophile, Obamacare booster -- has a really, really great bedside manner. He leans in; he listens. He's deeply thoughtful about seemingly intractable problems (Medicaid expansion, for instance, or the way doctors get paid) without being alarming. In short, he's the guy you want in the exam room when your kid falls off the jungle gym. And if you live in Massachusetts, he wants to be your governor. We spoke with Berwick mostly about health care on his way to more far-ranging interview on Radio Boston. In a 30-minute discussion, Berwick talked about the "majestic" Affordable Care Act and compared re-inventing health care to throwing a hat over a very tall wall and climbing over to retrieve it. Here, edited, is some of our (very long) interview (Zimmerman and Goldberg, 10/18).

California Healthline: California One Of Two States Cashing In On New ACA Long-Term Care Funding
The Community First Choice Option, or CFCO, allows participating states to secure an increase of six percentage points in the federal share of the federal-state Medicaid funding partnership for home- and community-based attendant services to beneficiaries who otherwise would need institutional care. California was the first state to adopt CFCO last fall. Oregon followed suit a few months ago, and six other states have either submitted plans to participate or intend to submit plans by the end of fiscal year 2014 (Blasi, 10/18).