Author: Scott Welch
Now, instead of relying on the market or the courts to keep health care prices in check, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to order the state’s hospitals, doctors’ offices and insurance companies to keep their costs below a certain level. If they don’t, the state could impose a hefty fine.
Sacramento-based Sutter Health successfully defeated a class-action lawsuit alleging that it had used its market power to negotiate higher rates from major insurers, thereby assuring inflated premiums for roughly 3 million employers and individuals. Jurors returned a verdict Friday in the antitrust trial before Federal Magistrate Laurel Beeler in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. ...
The California Chamber of Commerce and a coalition including numerous local chambers of commerce are supporting legislation that allows for an employee-selected flexible work schedule. AB 1761 (Voepel; R-Santee) relieves employers of the administrative cost and burden of adopting an alternative workweek schedule per division, which accommodates employees, helps retain employees, and allows the employer to invest these ...
Top executives at two of the biggest Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers are split over how necessary a fourth dose is for most of the world’s population. Pfizer Inc. Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla said in a CBS interview on Sunday that protection from three shots will wane and a fourth dose is needed “right now”. Then, ...
Last spring, Lags Medical Centers, a sprawling chain of pain clinics serving more than 20,000 patients in California, abruptly shuttered amid a cloaked state investigation into “credible allegations of fraud.” Tens of thousands of patients were left scrambling for care, most of them low-income Californians covered by state and federal insurance programs. Many have struggled ...
To help fend off another wave of Covid-19, people will need a fourth dose of vaccine, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla told CBS on Sunday. “Many variants are coming, and Omicron was the first one that was able to evade — in a skillful way — the immune protection that we’re giving,” Bourla told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” ...
Millions of Californians face the prospect of losing health coverage this year as federal measures that vastly expanded the ranks of the insured amid the COVID-19 pandemic are set to expire this year.
When will workers get back into the office? My trusty spreadsheet reviewed Property Shark’s stats on statewide office-building investments, looking at last year vs. 2019. This data is one indicator one when workplace life returns to the water-cooler routine.
President Biden used the State of the Union not only to project optimism about the direction of the pandemic, but also to launch new efforts focused on mental health care and nursing home quality — two areas that have been shown to be deeply in need of reform over the last two years.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in 2019, he promised to lower prescription drug costs for all Californians. But now, as Newsom nears the end of his first term, his ambitious ideas — such as requiring California to make its own insulin and forging drug partnerships across state lines — have failed to get off ...