Month: April 2020
With growing signs of progress in the battle against the coronavirus, government officials and public health experts are beginning to talk more openly about the next phase: The gradual, highly targeted lifting of some social distancing restrictions that have devastated the economy.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, along with the Departments of Labor and the Treasury, have issued guidance aimed at ensuring Americans with private health insurance have coverage of COVID-19 diagnostic testing and certain other related services, including antibody testing, at no cost.
As the total number of coronavirus cases in California topped 16,000, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday he is confident the state is building up its number of ventilators, hospital beds and workforce to meet the demand of a still-to-come surge in patients that he projects won’t peak until May.
Congressional leaders and the White House are converging on the need for a new assistance package to try to contain the coronavirus pandemic’s economic devastation, fearful that a $2 trillion bailout law enacted last month will have only a limited effect.
According to a new report by Covered California, California’s marketplace, 2021 premium increases to individuals and employers from COVID-19 alone could range from 4 percent to more than 40 percent, if carriers must recoup 2020 costs and protect solvency. COVID-19 has been an unprecedented situation with one-year projected costs in the national commercial market ranging ...
Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said his foundation is funding the construction of factories that will manufacture seven promising coronavirus vaccines.
A new KFF analysis estimates that between 670,000 and 2 million uninsured people around the country eventually could be hospitalized with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Reimbursing hospitals for those treatments could cost between $13.9 billion and $41.8 billion.
Starting today, small businesses can apply for the nearly $350 billion in loans available through the economic rescue plan from Congress. The loan program, known as the Paycheck Protection Program, is intended to support businesses so they can ride out the tough economic times and, most importantly, assist with either keeping current workers or rehire those who were laid off.
The Trump administration quietly invoked the Defense Production Act to force medical suppliers in Texas and Colorado to sell to it first — ahead of states, hospitals or foreign countries.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he is going back to the drawing board for his budget proposal, abandoning the $222 billion plan he laid out in January as the coronavirus pandemic hammers the state’s economy.