California Watch
News stories in this section spotlight activities in California, including actions by the state Assembly and state Senate; proposed legislation; regulators like the Department of Managed Health Care and Department of Insurance; and the state ACA exchange, Covered California.
Doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies in California will be limited to annual price increases of 3% starting in 2029 under a new rule state regulators approved Wednesday in the latest attempt to corral the ever-increasing costs of medical care in the United States.
Kaiser Permanente has begun notifying millions of its health plan members that the company was hit with a data breach in mid-April, according to a filing with the feds.
Months after Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the proposal, lawmakers in Sacramento are trying again to extend unemployment benefits to California workers who are on strike. Under Senate Bill 1116, introduced by State Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-Burbank) and State Sen. María Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles), California workers would be eligible to receive unemployment benefits after being ...
More than 1,600 Blue Shield of California members have registered for a musculoskeletal (MSK) program through the payer’s digital health platform since its launch in January. The Wellvolution platform has offered three MSK programs to 2.5 million eligible adult members for several months, though Angie Kalousek-Ebrahimi, senior director of lifestyle medicine at Blue Shield of California, ...
In California, more than 2,100 bills were introduced for consideration by lawmakers in the second year of our 2023-2024 legislative session. For a bill to become law, it must pass through both the state Senate and Assembly, typically requiring a majority vote.
A large and diverse coalition of 150 California business representatives have joined a CalChamber-led coalition in strong opposition to AB 2200 (Kalra; D-San Jose), a job killer bill, that would create an expensive government bureaucracy to finance a state-run health care system.
California’s massive budget deficit, coupled with the state’s relatively high level of joblessness, has become a major barrier to reducing the billions of dollars of debt it has incurred to pay unemployment benefits. The surge in unemployment brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the state’s unemployment insurance trust into insolvency. And over the last year California’s joblessness ...
Nearly a half-million health workers who stand to benefit from California’s nation-leading $25 minimum wage law could be in for a rude awakening if hospitals and other health care providers follow through on potential cuts to hours and benefits.
Not filling open positions in state government, cutting a school facilities program and several climate initiatives, delaying funding for public transit — these are some of the first steps that California officials plan to take to deal with a looming multibillion-dollar budget deficit.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers are trying to find a way to fund Medi-Cal and other promised safety net programs while dealing with a projected deficit of $38 billion to $73 billion.