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.
The same health advocates who fought for the Medi-Cal expansion say the next step in achieving health equity is expanding Covered California, the state’s ACA marketplace, to all immigrant adults by passing AB 4.
California announced a tentative settlement agreement Friday with a pharmaceutical company over its alleged role in perpetuating the opioid addiction crisis battering the state — the same company Gov. Gavin Newsom is partnering with to produce lower-cost opioid overdose reversal drugs. That means the state could hand any funds it receives from the settlement right ...
Families of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities say Gov. Gavin Newsom is reneging on a scheduled raise for the workers who care for their loved ones, and advocates warn of potential lawsuits if disability services become harder to get. Citing California’s budget deficit, the Democratic governor wants to save around $613 million in state funds by ...
Doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies in California will be limited to annual price increases of 3% starting in 2029 under a new rule state regulators approved Wednesday in the latest attempt to corral the ever-increasing costs of medical care in the United States.
Kaiser Permanente has begun notifying millions of its health plan members that the company was hit with a data breach in mid-April, according to a filing with the feds.
Months after Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the proposal, lawmakers in Sacramento are trying again to extend unemployment benefits to California workers who are on strike. Under Senate Bill 1116, introduced by State Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-Burbank) and State Sen. María Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles), California workers would be eligible to receive unemployment benefits after being ...
More than 1,600 Blue Shield of California members have registered for a musculoskeletal (MSK) program through the payer’s digital health platform since its launch in January. The Wellvolution platform has offered three MSK programs to 2.5 million eligible adult members for several months, though Angie Kalousek-Ebrahimi, senior director of lifestyle medicine at Blue Shield of California, ...
In California, more than 2,100 bills were introduced for consideration by lawmakers in the second year of our 2023-2024 legislative session. For a bill to become law, it must pass through both the state Senate and Assembly, typically requiring a majority vote.
A large and diverse coalition of 150 California business representatives have joined a CalChamber-led coalition in strong opposition to AB 2200 (Kalra; D-San Jose), a job killer bill, that would create an expensive government bureaucracy to finance a state-run health care system.
California’s massive budget deficit, coupled with the state’s relatively high level of joblessness, has become a major barrier to reducing the billions of dollars of debt it has incurred to pay unemployment benefits. The surge in unemployment brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the state’s unemployment insurance trust into insolvency. And over the last year California’s joblessness ...