A month into its debut, California’s new Medicaid prescription drug program is riddled with problems, leaving thousands of patients without medications — often after languishing on hold for up to eight hours on call center phone lines. On Jan. 1, the state handed control of its Medicaid drug program, known as Medi-Cal Rx, to Magellan Health, ...

California lawmakers passed legislation on Monday to provide most workers with up to two weeks of COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave, a move policymakers hope will slow the spread of the coronavirus across the state.

Thousands of football fans are expected to descend on Los Angeles for the Super Bowl in less than two weeks, along with the hordes of workers required to put on one of sport’s biggest annual spectacles. Mask and vaccine mandates are in force throughout L.A. County — including Inglewood, where SoFi Stadium is located — along with specific measures in the city of Los Angeles.

The lifting of the mandate will apply to counties without local mask orders of their own, such as San Diego, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, as well as swaths of the San Joaquin Valley. Counties can still opt to retain local mask orders, as Los Angeles County will do.

Employees covered by employers’ health plans, and individuals covered by Individual and Family Plan health insurance policies (purchased through an individual health insurance broker, Covered California, Nevada Health Link, etc.) are beginning to receive copies of their Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Forms 1095, in accordance with Affordable Care Act (ACA) law.

Last month, the federal government revealed that the U.S. spent $4.1 trillion on healthcare in 2020, over 20% of GDP and twice as much as the developed-world average. While hundreds of billions of dollars were spent fighting Covid-19, the overwhelming majority went to propping up the country’s broken healthcare system. National healthcare spending has doubled, adjusted for inflation, since 2000.