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.
While several states are fretting over potential health insurer shortages and lofty rate hikes for 2018 individual coverage, California's exchange seems to be a shining example of an insurance exchange gone right.
As they scrambled to finalize next year’s state budget, California lawmakers this week abruptly dropped a plan to offer full Medicaid benefits to young adults living in the country illegally.
Emergency room visits by people on Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program, rose 75% over five years from 800,000 in the first quarter of 2012 to 1.4 million in the last quarter of 2016, according to California's Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development.
Top Senate Republicans and their staff are plowing ahead with a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare in the hopes of getting legislation on the floor by mid-summer — even if their own GOP colleagues have no idea what the bill will contain.
I am a lifelong Democrat who has worked for more than a decade to improve the policies and build the coalitions necessary for the success of the Affordable Care Act. Even so, I believe the ACA didn’t go far enough to guarantee universal and affordable health coverage.
If the federal government does not clarify by mid-August whether it will continue an important health insurance subsidy for consumers next year, California’s state-run exchange will instruct its insurers to sell plans with significantly higher premiums to cover the loss of the money.
California lawmakers introduced legislation Monday that would allow $465 million in higher payments for doctors and dentists who provide publicly funded care.
A man showing early signs of a heart attack — detected by a bot tracking his heart activity from a sensor on his wrist — is picked up by a self-driving car that checks his vital signs on the way to the hospital. There, his doctors video-conference with a specialist, who assesses his symptoms through a Skype-like screen and recommends a treatment plan.
Medi-Cal patients are swamping California emergency rooms in greater numbers than they did before the Affordable Care Act took effect, despite predictions that the health law would ease the burden on ERs.
A Nevada drug-pricing bill that targeted diabetes drugmakers didn’t make it past the governor’s veto pen, but state lawmakers renewed their efforts with a new bill that not only zeroes in on pharma, but pharmacy benefit managers, too. And this time, the governor is more supportive, according to one report.