Month: November 2015
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is requesting a meeting with President Obama to discuss repealing ObamaCare’s “Cadillac Tax.” The 40 percent tax on high-cost health insurance plans, set to take effect in 2018, was intended to help restrain healthcare costs, but it has drawn opposition from some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle worried ...
Covered California has signed up more than 34,000 new individuals for health benefits since open enrollment started Nov. 1, exchange officials said Thursday. That’s about 2,000 a day and “very strong enrollment” for so early in the sign-up period that extends through Jan. 31, said executive director Peter Lee. But there’s a cloud on the ...
The drug industry is in denial about the seriousness of its pricing problem. Throughout this autumn, as the issue of drug pricing erupted from a long-simmering controversy into a full-blown headache, pretty much every CEO of note in biotech and pharma had to address the subject, and their tone was largely defensive and dismissive. There were vague promises of moderation, ...
From the beach party movies of the 1960s to the hippies of the 1970s and Silicon Valley’s baby billionaires today, California has long projected a youthful ambiance. That’s about to change in a big way. The aging of California’s huge post-World War II baby-boom generation, combined with plummeting birth and immigration rates, means the Golden ...
Obama administration officials, urging people to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, have trumpeted the low premiums available on the law’s new marketplaces. But for many consumers, the sticker shock is coming not on the front end, when they purchase the plans, but on the back end when they get sick: ...
In a recent interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” newly elected House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) signaled a need for change in the House leadership, saying he will redesign the job and return the House to “regular order.” Despite his stated desire for change, the top issues Ryan plans to address — tax reform and ...
Three years ago, Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature enacted a major overhaul of the system that compensates workers for job-related injuries and illnesses. Senate Bill 863, backed by employers and labor unions, affected many specific aspects of the system but was aimed largely at reducing medical costs and redirecting savings into cash benefit increases ...
Most of those eligible for health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act are failing to claim them, according to a new study. Researchers with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute estimated that more than 24 million people were eligible for ObamaCare tax credits last year. By March, only 41 percent of ...
On Tuesday, the Joint Commission recognized more than 1,000 hospitals in California and other states as “Top Performers” for achieving high performance on key quality measures, the Biloxi Sun Herald reports (Biloxi Sun Herald, 11/16). The fifth-annual “Top Performer on Key Quality Measures” list was included in the organization’s 2015 annual America’s Hospitals: Improving Quality ...
There are major differences in health care status among different types of Asians and Latinos in California — and yet the state so far has resisted treating those subgroups differently, according to UCLA researchers who released an updated version of health survey data last month. “Data clearly show the need to disaggregate the Asian community ...