Latest California Healthline Stories
As Drug Prices Keep Rising, State Lawmakers Propose Tough New Bills to Curb Them
The measures would impose taxes on increases in the price of drugs that don’t reflect improved clinical value and set the rates paid by state-run and commercial health plans to a benchmark based on prices in Canada.
Counterfeit N95 Scam Widens as Senator Demands FTC Investigation
Authorities seized 1.7 million fake masks in New York and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell called for a national probe.
KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: All About Budget Reconciliation
Even while the Senate is busy with Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, the House has gotten down to work on a covid relief bill using the budget reconciliation process. Meanwhile, the watchword for covid this week among the public is confusion — over masks, vaccines and just about everything else science-related. Joanne Kenen of Politico, Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Post and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, the panelists recommend their favorite “health policy valentines” along with their favorite health policy stories they think you should read, too.
Vaccine Equity Is ‘North Star,’ Feds Say, and Clinics Are Key to Fair Distribution
Community health clinics are key to getting more Black and Hispanic Americans vaccinated, federal officials say. In Nashville, a vaccination push at federally funded clinics is underway.
New California Law Makes It Easier to Get Care for Mental Health and Substance Abuse
The measure, which took effect Jan. 1, removes loopholes that made it easy for insurers to use arcane company guidelines to avoid paying for care. Patients now have an easier way to challenge those denials.
Flurry of Bills Aim to Set Limits on Transgender Kids – And Their Doctors
Lawmakers across the U.S. are pushing bills to restrict transgender kids from participating in sports and ban doctors from treating them.
Health Workers and Hospitals Grapple With Millions of Counterfeit N95 Masks
Masks imitating the real thing are flooding U.S. ports, and authorities can hardly keep pace.
As Pandemic Surged, Contact Tracing Struggled; Biden Looks to Boost It
Reaching people who may have been in contact with covid patients has helped cut the number of infections, but these tracing efforts become less effective as the number of cases grows.
Farmworker Camps to Urban Tent Cities: Tailoring Vaccine Info to Where It’s Most Needed
Concerns arising in western North Carolina provide a window into the challenges facing health workers across the country as they seek to persuade vulnerable populations to be inoculated against covid.
Tech Companies Mobilize to Schedule Vaccine Appointments, But Often Fall Short
Techies and startups have thrown together vaccine appointment websites to address the chaotic rollout of covid shots. But software can’t replace vaccines, and for many people the sites are just another piece of the vaccination “Hunger Games.”