Medicaid spending soared nearly 14 percent last year—its biggest annual increase in at least two decades—as a result of millions of newly eligible low-income enrollees signing up under the Affordable Care Act, according to a report released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Total spending was highest in the 29 states that expanded Medicaid, the ...

California made national news last week when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill allowing doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to patients who are terminally ill and want to die. But many quieter bills also will change health care in the state. The first half of the 2015-2016 legislative session ended last weekend ...

Consumers Union wants the Medical Board of California to require doctors who are on probation to notify their patients. The policy and advocacy division of Consumer Reports filed a petition last week urging the board to take action. The board is expected to hold a public hearing on the issue at its Oct. 30 meeting ...

An analysis of narrow networks on the Covered California health plan marketplace found that in most cases consumers don’t need to worry that they are trading quality of care for lower costs. While Covered California plans did offer narrower hospital networks, there was no significant relationship between raw network size and performance, according to the ...

The window is closing for congressional leaders to avert the double-digit premium hikes that are set to hit 8 million Medicare enrollees next year. Congress has only a handful of weeks to prevent the 52 percent premium hikes — the largest in the program’s history — that will harm seniors and drain state budgets. And with ...

When Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of an older generic drug by more than 5,000 percent last month, the move sparked a public outcry. How, critics wondered, could a firm charge $13.50 a pill for a treatment for a parasitic infection one day and $750 the next? The criticism led Turing’s unapologetic CEO to say ...