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The leaders of California鈥檚 legislative health committees who wield power over state health policy have been showered with money from the health care sector, with drug companies, health plans, hospitals and doctors providing nearly 40 percent of their 2017-18 campaign funds.
The whistleblower complaint says that Sutter, one of the largest health systems in the U.S., exaggerated how sick certain Medicare patients were in order to collect higher payments from the government-funded program.
As wildfires blaze in Northern and Southern California, millions of people outside of the burn zones are getting exposed to dangerous wildfire smoke. For those donning face masks for protection, only a specific mask will work.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra views his resounding Election Day win as a 鈥渃lear signal鈥 from voters to continue his work defending the Affordable Care Act and pushing back against the Trump administration.
Even though Democrat Gavin Newsom campaigned for single-payer, it鈥檚 unlikely that he and other lawmakers will completely overhaul the state鈥檚 health care system right away. Instead, they will likely propose incremental steps to provide more Californians with health insurance.
As politicians across the country toss about such health care catchphrases, sometimes interchangeably, many voters say they鈥檙e 鈥渏ust confused.鈥
Although dialysis provider DaVita Inc. has taken major financial hits this year, including a $383.5 million jury award in response to wrongful death lawsuits, it still rakes in profits. The company faces its biggest threat next month, when California voters weigh in on a ballot initiative that could force it to leave the state.
John Cox, California鈥檚 Republican candidate for governor, contends that policies on abortion, health insurance and health care access should be guided by the conservative ideals of free market competition and personal responsibility. He hasn鈥檛 offered specific policy positions on health care, except that government should largely stay out of it.
California legislators approved some significant health care proposals in their rush to meet the Friday end-of-session deadline. They tackled controversial topics, such as making abortion pills available on college campuses, and adopted measures countering Trump administration attacks on the Affordable Care Act.
As more parents turn to medical marijuana to treat their sick children, a handful of states have changed the rules to allow them to administer the drug on campus. California is considering it 鈥 at the possible risk of losing federal funding.
In a major coup for the beverage industry, California lawmakers agreed to ban cities and counties from adopting soda taxes for the next 12 years. In exchange, the beverage industry agreed to pull an initiative off the November ballot that, if passed, would have made it much harder for local governments to raise taxes.
Anthem, one of the country鈥檚 largest insurers, has cut the reimbursement rate it pays for breast pumps by nearly half, fueling concerns that new moms 鈥 especially ones with lower incomes 鈥 will not be able to afford the pumps they need.
More than 20,000 Californians were sterilized at state homes and hospitals from 1909 to 1979, most of them women, people with disabilities and immigrants. Now, a state lawmaker wants to provide reparations to the roughly 800 living survivors, many of whom never consented to the procedures or did so under pressure.
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