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 a significant new change, California will require people to buy health insurance next year or pay a tax penalty.
Valley fever cases are on the rise in California and across the arid Southwest, and scientists point to climate change and population shifts as possible reasons.
State Sen. Jim Beall is angry. Four times now, he has introduced legislation to better enforce state and federal “parity” laws, which require equal treatment of mental and physical health problems. Four times, that legislation has failed. As he enters his final year in the Legislature, the San Jose Democrat plans what he calls a “full-frontal assault”. “I’m going to put even more effort into next year,” Beall said, “because I’m madder than hell about it.” California’s parity mandate was signed into law in 1999, and a federal parity law followed in 2008. But the state has struggled to ensure those laws work‚ which helps explain why parity feels like an empty promise to so many Californians. More than half...
More than two years after California’s surprise-billing law took effect, there’s one thing on which consumer advocates, doctors and insurers all agree: The law has been effective at protecting many people from bills they might have been saddled with from doctors who aren’t in their insurance network.
California Sen. Kamala Harris announced Tuesday that she is suspending her presidential campaign, citing a lack of financial resources. “I’ve taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life,” Harris wrote in a letter to supporters Tuesday.
The Franchise Tax Board (FTB) on Monday urged Californians to get health care coverage now and keep it through 2020 to avoid a penalty when filing state income tax returns in 2021.
Californians who get health insurance through their jobs are having to spend a greater share of their paychecks on health care costs, according to a new analysis of employer-sponsored health plans to be released Thursday by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation that researches health industry trends.
California is implementing its new state individual mandate in 2020. It requires all California residents to maintain Minimum Essential Coverage (MEC) – medical health insurance coverage – for themselves and their dependents beginning January 1, 2020. Californians who do not maintain this coverage, or otherwise meet exemption requirements, will be subject to a tax penalty that somewhat resembles the former penalty at the federal level.
Starting in January, young adults can sign up for California’s Medicaid program regardless of immigration status. But a fundamental question looms: Will they?
Concerned about the nation’s health care safety net, a bipartisan coalition of California’s congressional leaders urged the U.S. House leadership Tuesday not to cut off supplemental Medicaid payments to hospitals because doing so could jeopardize care for millions.