A major budget battle has erupted between the Brown administration and California’s counties over health-care spending, with the governor hoping to divert some $2.5 billion from the counties over the next three years.
At issue is money – initially, $300 million — that the counties use to provide care for the indigent. But Brown
California may think it’s saving big money by transferring children from Healthy Families to Medi-Cal, but it is missing the big picture.
In October 2012, the state announced that it would shift some 860,000 children from Healthy Families, California’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, to Medi-Cal, which reimburses physicians at lower rates. The move has
Health care cost containment is a critical issue facing every participant in the health care system. Efforts to contain costs, however, appear to have given rise to dangerous financial arrangements between health insurers and pharmacists that may be jeopardizing the health of California patients.
A loophole in California law allows your health insurer to
Affordable, quality health care is a mainstay topic in today’s media and will continue to be, especially here in Sacramento. As a dentist, cancer survivor and former member of the California Assembly, I know the importance of creating policy that is patient-centered. The delivery of optimal health care for patients is constantly evolving and recent
The health care field is facing a multitude of unprecedented changes as California prepares to implement the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The impending changes make it increasingly important to consider the different factors affecting affordability and quality of care.
For some time now, health care costs have been on the rise. As we face
We are in the countdown to a monumental change that will affect the lives of most every American in one way or another. In 308 days, health coverage through the Affordable Care Act begins for tens of millions of Americans, millions in California alone. In 216 days, the doors swing open for enrollment to start.
These days, it seems like our leaders in Washington have trouble finding common ground. However, the State of the Union address and the Republican response offered a welcome moment of agreement. Both President Obama and Senator Marco Rubio called for urgent action to reduce violence in our schools and communities. It’s certainly true that Republicans
Los Angeles has the best-funded retiree health care among the nation’s big cities, a new study found, and it’s also paying a big price for a policy praised by many but practiced by only a few.
The city’s rare attempt to set aside money now to pay for retiree health care promised in the
The great health care reform countdown has begun, with nearly every American required to have some level of health insurance by the end of this year. That much we know for certain. What remains to be seen, however, is whether simply adding more people to the insurance pool will translate into better health for policyholders.
Big Soda spent big bucks. That’s how it defeated ballot measures to create soda taxes in two California towns.
In Richmond, in the Bay Area, and in El Monte, east of Los Angeles, the measures would have added a penny-an-ounce tax on soda. Had the taxes passed, they were projected to raise millions of