Posts Tagged: rates

News

Highway deaths: Red states vs. Blue states

A fire truck races to an emergency in downtown Los Angeles, 2016. (Photo Alexandre Moraes, via Shutterstock)

FairWarning: November’s presidential contest was bizarre in many ways, but there is one peculiarity that pundits haven’t pounced on: The states with the worst rates of traffic deaths in the country went solidly for Donald Trump while Hillary Clinton swept states with the lowest fatality rates. California was 10th from the bottom in its traffic fatality rate — about 8.11 deaths per 100,000 people. The highest was Wyoming, with 24.74 fatalities per 100,000.

News

CalPERS acts to cut earnings forecast, raise rates

CalPERS' governing board during a 2013 meeting. (Photo: CalPERS board)

Calpensions: A key committee yesterday approved a drop in the often-criticized CalPERS investment earnings forecast, gradually raising record rates already being paid by state and local governments, if approved as expected by the full board today.

News

Public pension funds eye weak investment returns

CalPERS' governing board during a 2013 meeting. (Photo: CalPERS board)

Calpensions: The state’s two largest public pension systems never recovered from huge investment losses during the deep recession and stock market crash in 2008. CalPERS lost about $100 billion and CalSTRS about $68 billion. Now after a lengthy bull market, most experts are predicting a decade of weak investment returns, well below the annual average.

News

A conversation with Planned Parenthood’s Kathy Kneer

Kathy Kneer, president and CEO of California Planned Parenthood. (Photos: Planned Parenthood)

Capitol Weekly Interview: Kathy Kneer is the president and CEO of California Planned Parenthood. CW’s Alex Matthews caught up with Kathy recently for a detailed discussion that included health care, family planning, meeting the needs of low-income Californians and the challenges of the Affordable Care Act.

News

CalPERS grapples with low earnings

The CalPERS' governing board during a meeting several years ago at the pension fund's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS board)

Calpensions: Twice in recent decades CalPERS fell below 100 percent of the funding needed for promised pensions, and twice CalPERS climbed back. But since a $100 billion investment loss in 2008, the CalPERS funding level has not recovered.

News

CalSTRS eyes hike in death benefit

Students in a classroom get instruction from a teacher. (Photo: Areipa.It, Shutterstock)

Because the system is underfunded, the CalSTRS board has made no inflation adjustment in the death benefit since 2002. The board was told that it could have increased the death benefit by about 34.7 percent during the period.

News

Despite need, 15% fewer dentists serving Medi-Cal patients

A state review of a dental program that serves low-income Californians shows that significantly fewer dentists are accepting those patients, despite a surge in demand. According to the California Department of Health Care Services report, released July 1, the number of dentists accepting Medi-Cal patients fell by 14.5 percent between 2008 and 2013. That’s a loss of 1,354 providers for the Denti-Cal program, which is the dental portion of Medi-Cal.

News

Brown, lawmakers hunt Medi-Cal money

Demonstrators seeking more funding for health care coverage gathered recently at the state Capitol. Inside, the Senate voted to expand coverage to undocumented choldren. (Photo: Alvin Chen, Capitol Weekly)

Hoping to fill a “billion-dollar hole,” lawmakers were poised to gather in a special session to figure out new sources of funding for the state’s complex health care programs – including Medi-Cal.

News

CalPERS eyes long-term rate hike

The CalPERS' governing board during a meeting several years ago at the pension fund's headquarters. (Photo: CalPERS board)

CalPERS is considering small increases in employer and employee rates over decades to reduce the risk of big investment losses, a policy that also would lower an earnings forecast critics say is too optimistic. The proposal is a response to the “maturing” of a CalPERS system that soon will have more retirees than active workers. From two active workers for each retiree in 2002, the ratio fell to 1.45 to one by 2012 and is expected to be 0.8 to 0.6 to one in the next decades.

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