Image by Nadzeya HaroshkaAs Governor Newsom prepares his 2025 budget release this week, California’s Neurodegenerative disease groups representing hundreds of thousands of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Huntington’s patients, are hopeful that he includes funding to continue the state’s research registries since they run out of money this fiscal year.
A man receives a one-shot vaccination against COVID-19 in Covina. (Photo: Ringo Chiu, via Shutterstock)Almost 2 million of California’s poorest and most medically fragile residents may have to switch health insurers as a result of a new strategy by the state to improve care in its Medicaid program. A first-ever statewide contracting competition to participate in the program, known as Medi-Cal, required commercial managed-care plans to rebid for their contracts and compete against others hoping to take those contracts away.
OPINION: Currently, Kaiser Permanente subcontracts across parts of the state to provide Medi-Cal coverage. We are required to pay upwards of $200 million in administrative fees. This state contract allows us to put that money instead into more and better care for Medi-Cal members and the into communities that we serve.
The Kaiser Permanente hospital in San Diego, a 617,000-square foot facility. (Photo: Roaming Panda Photos)OPINION: In giving private health care giant Kaiser Permanente a broad, no-bid Medi-Cal contract that is light on detail, the state could unwind over 40 years of locally driven health care coordination and collaboration for the most vulnerable among us.
Nurses and physicians in a busy hospital corridor. (Photo: Monkey Business Images)The California Nurses Association is still committed to pushing through its controversial universal health care bill despite stiff opposition from the Democratic Assembly Speaker and medical professional organizations. The union has a strong ally in front-runner gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom, who says that a single-payer system as proposed in Senate Bill 562 is the best way to provide health care to all.
An elderly patient in a wheelchair receiving care at a California hospital. (Photo: bikeriderlondon, via shutterstock)In 2008, outraged by a string of snooping incidents involving celebrities’ medical records, California legislators passed a groundbreaking law that compelled hospitals to quickly report patient privacy breaches and gave the state power to levy fines for such violations. But a ProPublica analysis of state data shows enforcement has been inconsistent.
Pharmaceuticals and money -- elements in the debate over a cost-disclosure bill. (Photo: O.S. Fisher, Shutterstock)An attempt to force drug makers to disclose their costs and profits for drugs that sell wholesale for more than $10,000 annually was derailed in the Legislature, facing strong opposition from an industry targeting similar measures in other states. The forces battling over the bill include some of the most powerful in California.
Voters may be apathetic on Election Day, but there are some people in California who are excited indeed about the ballot – those who have a big pocketbook interest in the outcome. Campaign spending on six ballot propositions has approached a quarter-billion dollars – a hefty price tag, even in California
Led by medical insurers, opponents of two November ballot initiatives aimed at regulating insurance rates, raising the limits on pain-and-suffering awards and requiring doctors to be drug tested have raised nearly $92 million from their largest donors, according to figures compiled by the state’s political watchdog.
OPINION: Little did I know that when I became disabled myself, my employer and its workers’ compensation insurance carrier would care so little about me.