California lawmakers are wasting little time debating the $227 billion budget proposal Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week. In a break with the normally slow-moving process that drags out for months, budget committees in both the Assembly and state Senate convened this week to review the governor's spending plan, which includes immediate financial relief to families and businesses hard hit by the pandemic.

A COVID financial relief program which helps small businesses continue to pay workers resumed offering loans this week, the Small Business Administration (SBA) announced. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was reopened to businesses that did not receive a first round forgivable PPP loan on Monday. The program expanded to accept applications from certain businesses that did receive funding during the first round (so-called “Second Draw” businesses) on Wednesday.

CMS will raise Medicare Advantage plan payments by 4.08%, the agency announced Friday. It also signed off on its controversial proposal to complete a multiyear phase-in of a new payment methodology. The new process will adjust plan payments using diagnoses solely from encounter data—information created by healthcare providers about patients’ medical conditions and treatment.

A new KFF analysis examines how new federal rules on price transparency for health services may affect patient decision-making and market pricing. As of January 1, 2021, the United States Department of Health and Human Services requires that hospitals publish payer-negotiated rates for common services on their websites. A second set of rules, which requires insurers ...

President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday proposed a $1.9 trillion rescue package to combat the economic downturn and the Covid-19 crisis, outlining the type of sweeping aid that Democrats have demanded for months and signaling the shift in the federal government’s pandemic response as Mr. Biden prepares to take office. The package includes more ...

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden on Friday said he would order increased production of syringes and other supplies to ramp up vaccinations against COVID-19 and improve upon the Trump administration rollout that he called a “dismal failure.” Under Biden’s plan, federal disaster-relief workers would set up thousands of vaccination centers, where retired doctors would administer shots ...