Morning pollution over Longt Beach. (Photo: Katharine Moore, via Shutterstock)OPINION: We all have witnessed the devastation of climate change. As I write this, our California neighbors in Napa, Sonoma and up north are losing homes and businesses to wildfire. Every year, wildfire season is more severe than the year before. But the ravages of wildfire are not the only harmful result of climate change that is impacting us.
Illustration of school children, education and the pandemic. (Photo: Felipe Sanchez, via Shutterstock)OPINION: California is dealing with cascading crises the likes of which have never been experienced before. Between February 2020 and today, California’s unemployment rate rose from a record low of 3.9% to 13.3%. Nearly two million Californians who were working then aren’t working now. And California’s clean energy economy — which employed 3% of the state’s workforce before COVID-19 — has also taken a hit.
A pharmacist checks his stock in a California drug store. (Photo: Tyler Olson, via Shutterstock)OPINION: Drugstore robberies are a symptom of a larger trend in the retail space where pharmacists are forced to work alone for hours on end, juggling telephones, cash registers, and security duties in addition to dispensing medicine.
A depressed man sits alone on a park bench. (Photo: Mikael Damkier)OPINION: Nearly two decades ago, California raised the bar for our state’s wellness by requiring insurers to equally cover services for both physical and mental health conditions. Now a national standard, California’s groundbreaking Mental Health Parity law was among the first to recognize how grave inequities in the form of higher co-pays or fewer allowable visits diminish wellness and productivity.
A vendor hawking buttons, stickers at the Callfornia Republican Party convention. (Photo: Serla Rusli)Judy DeVries was in her car when she heard the surprise news that Ted Cruz had selected Carly Fiorina as his running mate. She knew immediately what she had to do. “We’re like ‘Oh my goodness, we have a VP,” she said. “We need to make buttons!”
A soft drink waiting to be consumed. (Photo: Aiaikawa, vis Shutterstock)After several failed attempts to impose statewide taxes on sweetened beverages like sodas and fruit drinks, a bill was circulated last year that would have required warning labels on hundreds of beverages, which would have read: “STATE OF CALIFORNIA SAFETY WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar contributes to obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay.” Fortunately, common sense prevailed and the bill died in committee; but it has been resurrected this year – S.B. 203 (Monning, D-Carmel).
The Affordable Care Act not only drastically changes how health care is delivered but sharply alters the underpinnings of California’s economy. To get a deeper sense of health care reform’s impact on the Golden State, Capitol Weekly talked to Micah Weinberg, PhD, a senior policy advisor at the Bay Area Council and CEO of Healthy Systems Project, a health care consulting firm based in Sacramento.
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
“The Healthy Families program is short by almost $100 million, according to California health officials. That number will rise, officials said, because the current deficit only covers the program’s operation for January and half of December.” — David Gorn.
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