Posts Tagged: System
Opinion
OPINION: Here’s the best advice: To the more than 3 million retirees, teachers, firefighters, nurses, police officers and other state and local government employees who rely on the state’s two largest pension funds: Do not be alarmed. To the critics who periodically predict – always following downward swings in the stock market – that the pension funds will someday not be able to meet their obligations: Do not be alarmist.
Opinion
OPINION: Growing up in Nigeria meant living in the shadow of sickle cell disease (SCD). In 2010, an estimated 90,000 newborns in Nigeria had sickle cell anemia – the highest incidence of SCD worldwide. I vividly remember being about 10 years old and the pain of learning why my neighborhood friend had stopped coming over to play.
News
When Denise Williams’ baby boy was 2 months old, she became alarmed by a rattling sound in his lungs and took him to the emergency room. While undergoing treatment, he spiraled into a disabling neurological disorder.
Opinion
OPINION: During the past year, as the pandemic inflicted incalculable heartbreak and loss, internet connectivity helped Californians get through the worst public health crisis in over 100 years. But while reliable, high-speed internet access became a lifeline to so many of us during the pandemic, this lifeline was not equally available to all of us.
Opinion
OPINION: All Californians deserve not only a clean energy future, but assurance that the programs we invest in will achieve this goal equitably and at the least possible cost. This is particularly important for seniors living on a fixed income and working families already struggling to make ends meet.cThis is why it is critical that reforms are made to the state’s rooftop solar subsidy program called Net Energy Metering (NEM).
Opinion
Close your eyes. Think about all the problems facing California. Think about the top 10 problems. Now think about the top 100 problems. Now open your eyes. We doubt anyone reading this thought about staffing in kidney dialysis centers. Yet this year proposition 23 was asking voters in California to have a say on the staffing requirements for kidney dialysis centers.
News
OPINION: Shoplifting and stealing are becoming a bigger problem in California, which is why small businesses are showing interest in two statewide ballot measures that deal with crime and justice. Proposition 20 seeks to strengthen consequences for serial theft, while Proposition 25 is a referendum on the Legislature’s no cash bail law.
Opinion
OPINION: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death has placed the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) back in the headlines because the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in November in a case, California v. Texas, that seeks to repeal it. The widely publicized prospect of eliminating health care coverage for more than 20 million Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic should be enough to give our elected leaders and the high court pause.
News
Police response to mental-health calls often ends – again and again – in chaotic, noisy hospital emergency rooms, where staff is stretched thin, and a heart attack is likely to take precedence over someone in the throes of a mental-health crisis. “Traditionally, people would be dropped off at the ER, and the only option was to transfer them to a psychiatric facility,” says Dr. Scott Zeller, a nationally known emergency psychiatrist and former president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry.
Opinion
OPINION: The current system allows claims adjusting companies that employ professional adjusters to secure a license covering its employees, which is practical and efficient and meets the needs of California’s consumers. Far from unique, this system has been proven to work in states like Montana and Utah. However, if the department’s bill, SB 1291 is enacted, it would totally upend a perfectly functional system for licensing independent insurance adjusters by disallowing state licensing for companies to cover its professionals
A view across the river of the CalSTRS headquarters in West Sacramento. (Photo: ImageAllan, via Shutterstock)
