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.
Last year, the budget writers in Gov. Jerry Brown's administration held their noses when Democrats pushed through the Legislature a $3.2-million subsidy for a union healthcare plan.
"Hundreds of millions of dollars" in insurance claims nationally, and possibly far more, could shift from health insurers to workers' comp carriers due to Obamacare, according to a new study.
Compared with other states, California is ahead in terms of expanding health care coverage to undocumented immigrants, and some experts say it could spur other states to follow suit, the Los Angeles Times reports.
But in California this spring, something different happened: A merger fell through.
Six years after eliminating health coverage for adult immigrants living in the U.S. illegally during the Great Recession, Contra Costa County has cobbled together enough money to begin insuring them again, although the program could be short-lived. The Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to launch a $1 million pilot program aimed at providing primary ...
Not-for-profit hospitals increasingly are entering the health insurance market in an effort to boost revenue during a period of slow growth,according to a report released last week by Moody’s Investors Service, Modern Healthcare reports. According to the report, the hospitals are making such moves even as the startup costs and short-term losses have put a ...
Efforts are underway to jump-start negotiations to come up with an equitable tax on health plans that will fill a $1.1 billion gap in the Medi-Cal budget. Legislative leaders announced conference committee appointments Wednesday, after lawmakers failed to come up with a fix before the regular legislative session ended Sept. 11. That wasn’t a formal ...
When it comes to health care costs, it’s clear: Where you live matters. And in California, the gap is especially sharp between the north and south. Take, for instance, common procedures like a cesarean section or a total knee replacement. The total average price tag for a typical C-section in the four-county Sacramento area is ...
Prime Healthcare, which backed out of its proposed bid to buy six Daughters of Charity Health System hospitals, including two in the Southland, after disagreeing with conditions imposed on the sale sued the state’s attorney general Monday for allegedly abusing her constitutional powers. In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Los Angeles, Prime Healthcare ...
In a significant yardstick of how health care coverage has blanketed the country under the Affordable Care Act, California ranked among states recording the biggest drop – 4.7 percent – in uninsured residents from 2013 to 2014, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released Wednesday. The new data confirm California has seen “one of the ...