Industry Updates
This broad category includes articles concerning health insurance costs, carrier and health plan news, changing benefits technology, and surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation and others on employee benefits.
After years of multimillion-dollar battles over medical malpractice awards, California legislators passed a deal increasing the monetary amount patients could claim in lawsuits while also averting a costly November ballot battle. The deal, which passed both chambers with near unanimous votes, replaced a ballot measure with legislation raising the cap for a patient’s “non-economic damages,” or ...
When she was Pennsylvania’s insurance commissioner, Jessica Altman, the appointee of a Democratic governor, often bumped against the political limits of health care policy in a state where Republicans controlled the legislature. Despite the constraints of a divided government, Altman played a key role in persuading lawmakers in 2019 to join Gov. Tom Wolf in passing ...
To nobody’s surprise, Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday announced another upward revision in the state’s general revenues—a $55 billion bump since January. To the surprise of many, this means that discretionary surpluses for three consecutive fiscal years will top $100 billion.
On April 21, 2022, the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (OSHSB) approved a third readoption of the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) Emergency Temporary Standards (ETS) to replace the current version, which is set to expire on May 6, 2022.
Unauthorized immigrants over age 49 who fall below certain income thresholds are now eligible for full coverage by Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, the federal-state partnership that provides health insurance to low-income people.
Nurses from Stanford and Lucile Packard Children’s hospitals who went on strike last week are set to return to work Tuesday after their union reached a tentative agreement on Friday with Stanford Health Care.The agreement, if ratified Sunday, will put an end to the nearly week-long strike that union members had overwhelmingly approved as they ...
Insurers on the Affordable Care Act will have to develop standardized plan options and prepare for network adequacy audits on the law’s insurance exchanges starting next year, according to a final rule.
California workplace regulators on Thursday extended mandatory pay for workers affected by the coronavirus through the end of 2022, acting more than two months after state lawmakers restored similar benefits through September.
On Monday, the commission finalized that report, which found that health care costs will skyrocket by 30% in nine years under the current system and advocates an overhaul that would eliminate distinctions among private and government coverage, in favor of a new system to provide health care to all Californians.
California is still offering free covid testing to uninsured residents even though the federal government ran out of money to pay for it. While Congress debates whether to put more money into free testing, California is leaning on programs it already had in place: special state-based coverage for uninsured Californians, school testing, and free tests ...