As reported by ABC’s local Los Angeles affiliate, the main grievances of the nurses union were that LA County had violated a law requiring minimum nurse to patient ratios and failed to retain nurses. The inadequate staffing leading to these grievances might be attributed to a shortage of nurses, but apparently that is a controversial […]
In a Hill-HarrisX survey released Thursday, 13 percent of respondents said they would prefer a health care system that covers all citizens and doesn’t allow for private plans, an approach that is sometimes referred to as “single-payer.” The most popular option, at 32 percent, consisted of a universal, government-operated system that also would allow people […]
One of the most persistent ideas of Democratic politics in California — the push for single-payer health insurance — is favored by only 41 percent of voters statewide, while 46 percent would not swap their private insurance for a government-backed system, according to a poll released Wednesday, Feb. 6 by Quinnipiac University. That result comes […]
The number of Americans without health insurance jumped to its highest level in four years, new figures show, a trend that pits Democrats who say the White House is sabotaging the Affordable Care Act against Republicans who blame high premiums under the law for locking people out of coverage. The percentage of adults without health […]
Investing billions of dollars in affordable housing and homeless programs in recent years has apparently put the brakes on what had been a surge in California’s homeless population, causing it to dip by 1 percent this year, a federal report released Monday showed. The decline was in sharp contrast to the 2017 statewide count, when […]
San Diego County again had the fourth-largest homeless population in the country and there has been little change in the nationwide number of people on the street and in shelters since last year, according to a report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The numbers come from an annual one-night […]
While the hepatitis A virus ran unchecked through the streets and homeless camps of San Diego last year, claiming 20 lives and sickening hundreds of others before it was corralled, $170 million in special funding for mentally ill people sat in a county bank account. So much Mental Health Services Act revenue piled up, San […]
The average cost of employer health coverage offered to workers rose to nearly $20,000 for a family plan this year, according to a new survey, capping years of increases that experts said are chiefly tied to rising prices paid for health services. Annual premiums rose 5% to $19,616 for an employer-provided family plan in 2018, […]
The 2004 measure was Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative. The campaign to pass it was led by a Palo Alto real estate developer whose son suffered from an incurable illness that he believed stem cells, the keystones of human biology, could heal. Other supporters included preeminent scientists, Hollywood celebrities, business […]
The leading current bill to establish single-payer health insurance, the Medicare for All Act (M4A), would, under conservative estimates, increase federal budget commitments by approximately $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years of full implementation (2022–2031), assuming enactment in 2018. This projected increase in federal healthcare commitments would equal approximately 10.7 percent of GDP in […]
For the first time in six years, the share of U.S. workers offered health insurance through their employer has risen, a sign a tighter labor market is prompting businesses to offer more generous benefits. In March, 69% of private-sector employees were offered medical benefits from their employer, according to an annual survey the Labor Department […]
Covered California premiums projected to rise 11 percent in 2019
California signed up an estimated 450,000 people under Medicaid expansion who may not have been eligible for coverage, according to a report by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s chief watchdog. In a Feb. 21 report, the HHS inspector general estimated that California spent $738.2 million on 366,078 expansion beneficiaries who were ineligible. It […]
California’s largest health care system is a single-payer system (“Medi-Cal”) that covers the state’s 13 million poorest residents, a population greater than all but four states. Service is terrible. Despite spending of $100 billion per year, appointments are hard to get, emergency room visits are up, there’s little indication of greater healthiness, and there’s even […]