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.
A federal court in California has granted a preliminary injunction to prevent Assembly Bill 290, which is aimed at limiting dialysis provider profits and premium assistance, from taking effect.
Uninsured Californians who think the 2017 repeal of the federal tax on people who refuse to obtain health insurance takes them off the hook could face a painful surprise when they pay their 2020 state taxes.
Sutter Health will pay $575 million to settle a closely watched antitrust case filed by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, whose office had accused the nonprofit health care giant of using its market dominance in Northern California to illegally drive up prices.
After seeing a strong surge in enrollment last week, Covered California has extended the deadline until Friday for state residents to sign up for a health insurance policy that would begin covering them on Jan. 1. The original deadline was Sunday.
Spending on health care in the state now exceeds $400 billion a year — more than $10,000 per person. That has led to an explosion of political attention, just as agriculture and industrial activity dominated California's political landscape in their heydays.
In a significant new change, California will require people to buy health insurance next year or pay a tax penalty.
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.