Latest California Healthline Stories
Aetna and United Are Out of California. Who’s Moving In?
Two of the nation’s biggest health insurers are leaving California’s individual market. Find out why that might be a good thing and meet the plans that are moving in to take their place.
Insurance Commissioner Worried About United’s Departure From Individual Market
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones issued some words of warning about United Healthcare’s decision to withdraw from the individual market in California.
First MCO Tax, Next Comes Rate-Setting
State officials reached an agreement on reinstating the managed care organization tax in part by addressing several of the desires of the institutions being taxed.
Could This Little-Watched Court Case Sink Obamacare?
A pair of lawsuits allege that a major part of the Affordable Care Act is technically illegal. Are these suits a real threat to the ACA, or the last gasps of conservative resistance before the law’s provisions go online? Depends whom you ask.
Assembly Takes Up Health Care ‘Loophole’
The Assembly this week is expected to debate a bill that would penalize large employers who reduce workers’ hours or wages in an attempt to move those employees off company-sponsored health care and into Medi-Cal coverage.
“We want to close that loophole that allows some of the largest and most profitable businesses in California to skirt their responsibility under the Affordable Care Act,” said Assembly member Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), author of AB 880.
Some large employers, he said, want to lower wages or hours of employees so those workers would earn a low-enough wage to become eligible for Medi-Cal, “dumping them onto the backs of the taxpayers,” Gomez said.
Agricultural Giant Takes Lead in Keeping Workers Healthy
Paramount Agribusinesses, a large fruit and nut grower in the Central Valley, offers no-cost primary health care to its employees and their families in an effort to increase productivity and improve the health of workers.
Low Costs and Narrow Networks: Inside Covered California
Why are some top insurers sitting out — and several top hospitals being pushed out — of the Golden State’s health insurance exchange? Here’s a look at the payers and providers that won’t be participating next year, and what their absences mean.
Exchange Premiums Closely Watched by Industry, Nation
“Everyone will be watching what goes on in California” this week, according to health insurance industry leaders. The state’s new health insurance exchange announced which insurers will offer coverage in Covered California and how much they’ll charge.
Administrative Change for High-Risk Subscribers
The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP), a federally-funded, state-run interim program, is moving from state to federal oversight for the rest of the year.
A high-risk pool for people unable to secure health care insurance under pre-Affordable Care Act rules, PCIP is temporary because the new federal reform law prohibits insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
Now the “state-run” part of that program is also on its way out, as California will shift control and management of the program to federal officials, according to administrators at the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board (MRMIB), which currently runs PCIP in California.
Health Care Issues High on Latino Community Agenda
Health care was a focal point when leaders of Latino community organizations met in Sacramento last week to launch the “California Latino Agenda,” a statewide campaign to unite leadership, establish goals and lobby for policy positions.