Posts Tagged: ACA

Recent News

State urges feds to OK immigrants’ health coverage

A physician flanked by the California flag. (Illustration: Niyazz, via Shutterstock).

Hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants in California would be able to buy insurance through the state healthcare coverage marketplace if the federal government accepts a newly signed state law to exempt them from the federal rule. On June 10, Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation requiring Covered California to ask the federal government for a waiver to let an estimated 390,000 undocumented immigrants buy health insurance – as long as they do it with their own money.

Analysis

Telling the truth about Medi-Cal

California doctor, a photo illustration. (Niyazz, via Shutterstock)

Medi-Cal is a deeply misunderstood program. It spends a lot of money, but it’s most certainly not out of control, and it is not a welfare program. The truth is that Medi-Cal is one of the state’s most cost-effective programs, serving more than one-third of Californians and half of all California children.

Opinion

Discrimination targets some health care providers

A physician flanked by the California flag. (Illustration: Niyazz, via Shutterstock).

While our state and nation continue to implement the Affordable Care Act, it is especially important that patients have access to a team of health care professionals who work together to achieve the best outcomes for their patients. Unfortunately, that is not always the case here in the Golden State.

Opinion

Medi-Cal: A dire situation for renewals

OPINION: The latest Medi-Cal renewal process jeopardizes health coverage for tens of thousands of California’s most vulnerable families. The renewal forms are long, confusing and complex. Some forms were mailed out in English, regardless if the Medi-Cal enrollee indicated that English was not their primary language.

News

Top tales: 2013’s key political yarns

State Capitol, Sacramento. (Photo: David Monniaux)

For the followers of California politics, non-election years usually are yawns. Not so 2013: One would be hard pressed to find a year with more hot-button events fraught with statewide political ramifications. Here’s our roundup of the year’s top tales, a subjective compilation to be sure but one which was fun to put together. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

News

Political fight boils on health care

California is in the forefront of the nation’s new health care insurance reforms and is following its own drummer, such as when it decided not to go along with the president’s call to give certain policyholders a year-long delay from being kicked off dubious health insurance plans. But the political forces surrounding the Affordable Care Act in California are profound and are all but certain to play a role in campaigns, including the potential reelection of California’s powerful insurance commissioner and whether Californians will approve a high-stakes initiative to regulate health insurers’ rates. (Above, left to right: Covered California’s Peter Lee, Diana Dooley and Susan Kennedy.) Photo: Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

News

Fears persist over state’s economy

From the PPIC survey on how Californians view their government: Most people without health insurance intend to get coverage via the new law, even though skepticism runs deep over the ACA itself. The state’s fiscal condition is a mixed bag — the recession is weakening, but the widening divergence between those with resources and those without is a major concern. Support for Gov. Brown is strong as next year’s elections loom, bust Congress and President Obama are getting poorer reviews.

News

CoveredCa enrolls 49,000 customers in first six weeks

California’s new online insurance marketplace signed up 31,000 customers in the first month it was open for business and another 18,000 in the first two weeks of November. That’s less than 1 percent of the number of people without insurance in the state, but California, through Nov. 2, still accounted for more than a third of those who signed up for insurance nationwide under the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature program to overhaul the health insurance industry.

News

Small business owners ponder ACA

Jerry Schumacher’s Fullerton-based engineering firm seems like the perfect example of what President Obama would like to see from American business when it comes to health care. The company offers coverage to all of its full-time employees, and pays 100 percent of the monthly premium.

News

Inmates’ health care a critical piece of new reforms

As it turns out, the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), known popularly as “Obamacare,” could be a boon to the California budget. Given how the ACA is structured, the state could end up spending less on an unlikely source – prison inmates. The ACA is designed to expand healthcare coverage to low-income

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