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.
More than half of uninsured Californians qualify for either Medi-Cal coverage or subsidies under the Affordable Care Act to help pay premiums, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report released Tuesday, KPCC’s “KPCC News” reports. Medi-Cal is California’s Medicaid program. For the state-by-state report, KFF reviewed data from the 2015 Current Population Survey Annual Social ...
In a series of bundled vetoes, Gov. Jerry Brown sent a hard-to-miss weekend message to state legislators: You dropped the ball before leaving Sacramento for 2015. Brown took action on 80 bills on Saturday, signing landmark legislation on everything from voter registration to farm animal antibiotics. But in a handful of vetoes, the governor quickly ...
As large clocks around the office counted down to Election Day last year, leading physicians ditched their business meeting and marched downstairs to stuff envelopes with campaign pamphlets in a makeshift war room at the California Medical Association’s Sacramento headquarters. No issue confronting voters threatened the pocketbooks and political prestige of physicians more than Proposition ...
Blue Shield of California has won state approval to acquire Care1st Health Plan, but had to make several concessions, including permanently relinquishing its not-for-profit tax exemption, the Los Angeles Times reports. Background Blue Shield proposed the $1.2 billion acquisition of the multi-state Medicaid insurer in December (Terhune, Los Angeles Times, 10/8). Care1st has more than ...
It hasn’t qualified for the ballot. And the measure’s implications are so complicated that even the experts at the Legislative Analyst’s Office had a hard time gauging its fiscal effects. But the proposed “California Drug Price Relief Act” already has the attention of the drug industry, with major companies in recent days donating more than ...
Nearly half of the estimated 700,000 Californians who have dropped their Obamacare policies during the past two years have enrolled in an employer-based plan, a new report from the Covered California exchange shows. In a news conference Thursday, Peter Lee, the organization’s executive director, said there were about 1.3 million Californians enrolled in the exchange’s ...
In advance of the Nov. 1 start of open enrollment for Covered California, new numbers show that just over half of the state’s remaining uninsured are eligible for health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The estimate was part of a state-by-state analysis compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Researchers found that California has ...
A bill that requires health care insurers to update their provider directories with accurate information has been signed by Gov. Jerry Brown and will take effect in July. The bill, introduced by state Sen. Ed Hernandez, D-West Covina, and sponsored by three statewide health advocacy and consumer groups, was proposed in response to numerous complaints ...
On Thursday, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a bill to make health insurance companies release accurate directories of their network of physicians and other providers. It was one of 10 health-related bills the governor approved on Thursday. Other bills now becoming law include an effort to cap the cost of prescription drug co-payments and a ...
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.