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.
Preserving and improving access to health care should be a priority for lawmakers. But a proposal now under consideration in the state Assembly would do the opposite dismantling our state’s health care system as we know it, resulting in massive cuts to patient care services and the potential loss of 175,000 jobs across the state.
The expansion of the federal low-income health program to cover more people hasn’t benefited Latinos as much as other racial and ethnic groups, according to a recent report by UCLA researchers.
Gov. Jerry Brown never had to decide whether to support single-payer health care because a bill never reached his desk. But just because the Legislature isn’t considering it this year doesn’t mean the idea has died — and even without it, California’s next governor will have plenty of health policy problems to worry about.
The sprawling Alera Group, which has been rapidly expanding its employee benefits business through a series of acquisitions, has added four more brokerages. The deals, which were closed May 1st, expanding the company’s presence in California, the Midwest and the eastern U.S., giving it offices in more than 65 U.S. locations.
Gov. Jerry Brown opted not to include major long-term investments in public health insurance programs in his budget revision on Friday, citing a preference for one-time spending measures.
A new research letter reports that doctors who received free meals and other kinds of payments from pharmaceutical companies tended to prescribe more opioid painkillers to their patients over the course of a year. Meanwhile, doctors who didn't get such freebies cut back on their opioid prescriptions.
More than 100,000 undocumented adult immigrants in California would be eligible for state-subsidized health coverage under a major budget push announced by Assembly Democrats on Monday.
Health insurers are seeking lofty rate hikes for 2019 individual coverage as they grapple with new obstacles in the Affordable Care Act marketplace, including the zeroed-out mandate penalty and the potential influx of skimpy insurance policies.
Anger over rising health care prices is boiling over in California. But good long term results rarely emerge from a red-hot pot.
The city of Los Angeles accused top drugmakers and distributors Thursday of fueling the nation's opioid epidemic by engaging in deceptive marketing aimed at boosting sales of powerful, addictive painkillers such as OxyContin, methadone and fentanyl.