Several health care bills are working their ways through the Assembly and Senate — many incorporating ideas originally introduced in the governor's health care proposal and other older bills.

According to California Healthline and the L.A. Times, some aim to curb the insurance industry by:

• requiring insurers to spend at least 85 percent of premium income on patient care
• permitting insurers to rescind coverage only after getting approval from state regulators;
• mandating that insurers offer specific types of health plans as a condition of doing business in California; and
• expanding coverage requirements to include maternity services and other procedures.

From the L.A. Times story:

Over the objections of the major doctor and hospital lobbies, the Assembly approved a measure backed by Schwarzenegger that would require medical providers to publicly reveal their costs and medical performance...The governor's health care proposal was rejected in large part because of its $14.9-billion price tag, which senators considered untenable with the state deep in the red. But the bills that are winning initial approval now put most of their costs on the health care industry.

The other bills include:

• SB 1096, which would allow pharmacies to share patient prescription information with third-party businesses that work for pharmaceutical companies.
  Under the legislation, pharmaceutical companies could send mailings directly to patients suffering from illnesses such as cancer, Parkinson's and schizophrenia, according to a San Francisco Chronicle story. The bill is intended to offer a way for pharmaceutical firms to encourage patients to take their medicine as prescribed and to refill prescriptions if called for by their doctors.

• SB 1058, which requires hospitals to report all cases of drug-resistant infections to the state Department of Public Health.
  Cases of community-required MRSA that result in death or require admission to an intensive care unit are already reportable. (Read the post "Reporting MRSA.") This looks like it would make all other cases reportable.
  This bill would require hospitals to screen patients and the state health department to publish those infection rates on its Web site by 2011, according to a San Francisco Chronicle story.