Posts Tagged: paid

Costly health care and pharmacy benefit managers

Drugs on a shelf for sale at a pharmacy. (Photo: i viewfinder, via Shutterstock)

by BILL REMAK posted 02.14.2020

OPINION: With the rising cost of health care at forefront of nearly every Californian’s mind, lawmakers in Sacramento are rightly considering a range of potential policy proposals to help rein in costs. In 2018, legislators took positive initial steps to regulate some of the egregious business practices of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) – little-known middlemen in the health care system who have contributed to rising costs.

Media and the state Capitol: A lawyer’s view

The state Capitol in Sacramento, viewed from 10th Street toward the West Steps.(Photo: Timothy Boomer)

by CHRIS MICHELI posted 12.02.2016

Love ’em or hate ’em, reporters play an important role in the legislative process — as well as with legislative strategy and ethics — in California. Because of this influence, the media in many ways are commonly viewed as a fourth branch of government (or “fourth estate,” as the cliché goes). They don’t approve or reject legislation, but their coverage affects those who do and they often influence the fate of bills.

Ballot admission price: $48 million

A California ballot box. (Photo illustration, Hafakot, via Shutterstock)

by DOROTHY MILLS-GREGG posted 10.06.2016

It’s like a poker game: If you want to play, you have to ante up. And this year, the ante for Nov. 8 was nearly $48 million. That’s how much the rival interests for an array of initiatives paid to get on the ballot. That’s not money spent on the merits of the initiatives. It’s the money spent simply to get the propositions before the public.

Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Anis Uzzaman literally wrote the book on success in Silicon Valley. The CEO and co-founder of Fenox Venture Capital is the author of “Startup Bible: The Silicon Valley Way of Developing Success.” But now the U.S. Department of Labor has thrown the book at his company.

Payments seven judges make toward their pensions would be cut nearly in half by a bill approved last week in a Senate committee, despite a warning from the chairwoman of a “slippery slope” undermining the governor’s pension reform.

Brown budget eyes full funding for teachers’ pensions

Lobby of the CalSTRS building in West Sacramento. (Photo: Paul Houseberg)

by ED MENDEL posted 05.16.2014

Gov. Brown has made a long-delayed proposal to get CalSTRS to full funding over the next three decades, giving the biggest rate hike to schools and smaller increases to the state and teachers. The nation’s largest teacher pension fund, which received $5.8 billion from the three sources last fiscal year, needs an additional contribution of about $4.2 billion a year to project full funding in 30 years.

OPINION: Just as patients don’t want to see a $15 charge for an aspirin on their hospital bill, hospitals don’t want to charge patients those prices. Hospital pricing has evolved because of decades of government regulations, cost shifts to private payers and unfunded government mandates (including expensive seismic retrofitting), inadequate Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, and the obligation for hospitals to treat all patients, regardless of ability to pay.