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.
Under new California law (SB 1242) effective January 1, 2023, California insurance agents are required to list their insurance license numbers on all email communications.
A trio of Democratic Western states hailed passage of their public health insurance options as important steps toward finishing Obamacare’s work of providing universal health coverage. But an early look at Washington, Colorado and Nevada show their plans to provide more affordable coverage to hundreds of thousands of people aren’t working out as hoped. In ...
California took another step toward slowing the escalation of healthcare cost growth with the formal launch of the Office of Health Care Affordability at a briefing in Sacramento on November 30. The long-awaited state agency’s goals are to lower the cost of care by setting spending targets for payers and providers – including hospitals – ...
The Biden administration moved this week to eliminate the so-called “family glitch,” giving 391,000 California residents a way to slash those costs starting this week. When the U.S. Affordable Care Act went into effect, it excluded workers from buying insurance coverage for their families on state-based exchanges if they could get a job-based policy for ...
The Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) of 2021 created a myriad of new compliance requirements for health plans, insurance issuers, insurance agents, and providers – all aimed to promote transparency. While the law was signed on December 27, 2020, many of its requirements and deadlines are approaching now. One of the new CAA requirements is for ...
There has been a troubling spike in coronavirus-positive hospital admissions among seniors in California, rising to levels not seen since the summer Omicron surge.
Blue Shield of California will be terminating 150 employees in the Sacramento region and 74 in Lodi as part of statewide layoffs affecting 373 people, according to notices the company filed with the state’s Employment Development Department. The company released a statement, saying: “As a nonprofit health plan, Blue Shield of California is driven by ...
This spring, Chevron workers testified that the company revoked health coverage for hundreds of members of the United Steelworkers Local 5 at the Richmond, California, refinery during a strike that ultimately lasted two months. Thousands of nurses at Stanford Health Care were told in April they would lose their health insurance if they did not return to work during ...
Starting January 1, 2023, a new law will require most types of insurance producers, as well as independent insurance adjusters, public insurance adjusters, and analysts, to include their license number on emails.
Nearly three years after California started fining residents who don’t have health insurance, the state has not distributed any of the revenue it has collected, KHN has learned — money that was intended to help Californians struggling to pay for coverage. And so far, the majority of Californians paying the tax penalty for not having insurance are ...