Prescription drug costs for California’s massive Medicaid program were draining the state budget, so in 2019 Gov. Gavin Newsom asked the private sector for help.

The Biden administration is planning on Tuesday to propose a long-sought change to the Affordable Care Act aimed at lowering health insurance costs for millions of Americans, four people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday weighed an employer’s challenge to a California labor law that authorizes private attorneys to sue on behalf of thousands of workers, even if those workers had agreed to arbitrate their claims individually.

A few weeks ago, state regulators imposed a record $55 million in fines on L.A. Care, California’s largest Medi-Cal managed-care plan, for failing to ensure adequate care and allowing treatment delays that threatened enrollees’ health. Patient advocates hope the move signals stricter enforcement against other Medi-Cal insurers, which have many of the same shortcomings for which the regulators just fined L.A. Care.

After dramatic declines in coronavirus cases, Los Angeles County has hit another plateau this week that comes amid the spread of the highly infectious BA.2 Omicron subvariant.

As you may have read in Paul Roberts’s recent compliance column, A Deep Dive into California “Single Payer,” the most recent effort to pass some sort of single-payer health care legislation in California failed. It marks the sixth time efforts have fallen short in a push to overhaul the state’s health care system.