Posts Tagged: percent

California, home to the largest number of older adults in the nation, would become the third state after Colorado and Montana to prohibit using sex as a means to differentiate the prices in long-term care policies — if the measure ultimately becomes law. “I term out in November… so this is my first and last opportunity — as an Assembly member anyway — to take this issue up,” said Assemblywoman Mariko Yamada, D-Davis. Her bill is AB 1553, introduced Jan. 27.

As California first lady, Maria Shriver spent years dealing with the issues of California. Now she has a new role: improving the struggling status of American women. She returned to Sacramento for her first public event in more than three years last week to promote efforts in The Shriver Report — a multimedia project — into the studies of gender inequality, poverty and an array of social issues

Draft budget offers new funds for higher ed

Gov. Jerry Brown

by SAMANTHA GALLEGOS posted 01.13.2014

On his wish list for the next fiscal year, Gov. Jerry Brown has put higher education right near the top. California’s public colleges and universities, Brown said as he unveiled the state budget, “used to be four years and free. Now in many cases it’s six years and expensive.” (Photo: Samantha Gallegos/Capitol Weekly)

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.

Following the city charter, a reluctant San Bernardino city council last week approved a police pay raise costing about $1 million, the second $1 million police salary increase since the city filed for bankruptcy last year. The four council members who voted for the 3 percent pay hike all criticized a city charter provision linking San Bernardino to the average police pay in 10 other cities, most much wealthier with higher per-capita income.

More California voters are becoming critical of the job Barack Obama is doing as President. The latest Field Poll finds that while 51% of California voters approve of the President’s overall performance, a growing proportion (43%) disapprove. This represents an increase of 8 percentage points in the proportion disapproving since July. While the growth in the number of Californians disapproving spans most demographic subgroups, some of the greatest increases have occurred among voter segments who have been among the President’s strongest supporters.

The rapidly growing cost of state worker retiree health care, a more generous benefit than received by active state workers, soon could be taking a bigger bite out of the state general fund than pensions. As if trading places, a new forecast expects the annual general fund payment for state worker retiree health care, now $500 million less than the payment for pensions, to be $500 million more than the pension payment in six years.

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.

New government accounting rules will more than double the pension debt reported by CalSTRS, boosting an “unfunded liability” that is now about $71 billion to a newly calculated “Net Pension Liability” of $166.9 billion.

The question of whether pensions are “sustainable” may get an answer as a CalPERS board action last week ratchets up annual state and local pension costs during the next seven years.

A former CalPERS chief actuary, Ron Seeling, gave pension critics ammunition in 2009 when he said his personal view was that “without a