The Health Law

Latest California Healthline Stories

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.

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.