Latest California Healthline Stories
Physicians Wary — or Simply Unaware — of ACA Loophole
A little-known Affordable Care Act provision could stick physicians with patients’ treatment bills. Experts warn that doctors could avoid state health insurance exchanges as a result, but perhaps even more troublesome is the number of doctors who are unaware of the loophole.
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.
How Do California Small Business Owners Feel About ACA?
In the wake of a Gallup poll showing that almost half of the country’s small business owners predict the Affordable Care Act will be bad for business, we asked stakeholders to assess the mood in California. The new state health exchange is scheduled to announce insurers and premiums for the “SHOP” small business exchange early next month.
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 Rates Make ‘Great Day For California’
Covered California, the state’s health benefit exchange, yesterday announced a rate structure for its health insurance plans that came in at a much more affordable price than first projected.
That was great news for exchange officials and it accounted for much of the pomp around that rare circumstance during yesterday’s announcement.
“This is really a great day for California,” said Diana Dooley, secretary of the state’s Health and Human Services agency and chair of the Covered California board. “We have come a long way and we have a long way to go,” she said. “We are moving to make Californians healthier and give them the financial security they need.”
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.
How Obamacare Could Change Medi-Cal For the Better (and Worse)
The Affordable Care Act will help boost Medi-Cal enrollment, which could lead to positive trickle-down effects for California, but observers warn that the program is already dealing with funding and access concerns.
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.
How Exchange Hopes To Reach Enrollees
Covered California exchange officials on Tuesday awarded $37 million in outreach grants to 48 community-based organizations. Those groups all have a wide reach, and represent a much bigger bloc of community organizations, according to Peter Lee, executive director of the California Health Benefit Exchange, now known as Covered California.
“We are talking about 250 organizations within these 48 groups,” Lee said. “We encourage them to work together so what you’re seeing here is partnership.”
Lee said applicants were encouraged to aim high, because the exchange wants to reach as many people as possible and so much of the target market — a multi-cultural, low-income and multilingual population — is difficult to reach.
What the Oregon Study Says (or Doesn’t) About Medicaid
Health care observers have claimed the results of the Oregon Health Study for their own, shaping its findings to fit their arguments about Medicaid and its expansion under Obamacare. Are the results too heavily emphasized considering the study’s limitations?