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.
In recent years Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion has created a financial fault line in American health care. Hospitals in states that enacted the expansion got a wave of newly insured patients, while those in states that rejected it were left with large numbers of uninsured individuals.
The Trump administration is preparing to release guidelines soon for requiring Medicaid recipients to work, according to sources familiar with the plans, a major shift in the 50-year-old program.
Hospital groups are vowing to push forward with a fight against the Trump administration over changes to a federal drug discount program following a setback last week.
Whether it was bracing for a possible repeal of Obamacare or pondering an ambitious single-payer program that would overhaul how California provided medical care to its residents, the issue of healthcare kept politicians and policy wonks busy in 2017.
The expected repeal of the ObamaCare mandate to buy health insurance means that states will soon have to step in and decide whether to create their own mandates.
Congressional Republicans appear to be moving full speed ahead in repealing the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, prompting debate among California health care experts on how the state could continue encouraging residents to buy health insurance — including imposing a state-level requirement to purchase coverage.
Responding to a strong surge in demand, Covered California on Thursday announced that anyone who still hasn’t enrolled in a 2018 health insurance plan on the individual market now has until Dec. 22 to sign up for coverage that begins Jan. 1.
Whether to establish a state-run, single-payer health-care system is shaping up to be one of the main differences among the candidates for governor in California in the run-up to the June primary election. The front-runner, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, says the only thing stopping single-payer in California is a lack of political leadership. The candidate running second in the pack, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, says he supports single-payer but has concerns about how to pay for it.
Pharmaceutical companies on Friday sued to block a new California law that would require them to give advance notice before big price increases.
House and Senate negotiators thrashing out differences over a major tax bill are likely to eliminate the insurance coverage mandate at the heart of the Affordable Care Act, lawmakers say. But a deal struck by Senate Republican leaders and Senator Susan Collins of Maine to mitigate the effect of the repeal has been all but rejected by House Republicans, potentially jeopardizing Ms. Collins’s final yes vote.