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.
Few statewide elections stand to matter more this year than the race for insurance commissioner — the primary official tasked with stemming a wildfire-stoked home insurance crisis that has sent rates soaring across California. The insurance commissioner leads the state agency that approves rate hikes for home and auto plans, investigates complaints about providers and enforces ...
California officials last Thursday said they uncovered a multimillion-dollar scheme to use stolen identities from people outside the state to charge for hospice services paid for with a government insurance program.
“This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.” When California voters approved Proposition 13 in 1978, they forced a massive change in how government services are financed that continues to reverberate nearly a half-century later. Prop. 13’s limits on property taxes that had financed public schools and other units of local government for ...
“This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.” Gavin Newsom loves to brag about his accomplishments as governor — a syndrome that sometimes backfires when reality raises its ugly head. So it was in January 2022 when he proposed extending health care coverage to everyone in the state, including undocumented immigrants. “I campaigned ...
House Republicans announced Monday that Congress will mount an investigation into “rampant hospice fraud,” alleging that potentially tens of millions in taxpayer funds may have been lost in improper payments to Southern California companies. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee, which has the authority to investigate, has sent a letter to California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, ...
A group operating out of a Friar Street office building in Van Nuys that advertises “virtual offices” incorporated 22 hospices and home care agencies in one year, including 15 hospices registered in one day to a single suite, according to an investigation by the Southern California News Group. The 15 hospices, all formed in “Suite 205” ...
Federal cuts to Medicaid spending under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, compounded by fiscal belt-tightening in Sacramento, could cost clinics up to one-third of its annual revenue, requiring cuts to services.
Projects that are supposed to offer mental health and substance use care to foster youth, new mothers, unhoused people and other vulnerable Californians have been delayed or cancelled.
The idea of a government-run universal health care program that would replace private insurance as the sole payer of health care costs faces many headwinds. It had fallen onto the backburner after lawmakers failed to get it done, with some balking at the $392 billion estimated annual cost.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has positioned himself as a national public health leader by staking out science-backed policies in contrast with the Trump administration. After Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez for refusing what her lawyers called “the dangerous politicization of science,” Newsom hired her to ...