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Pauline Bartolone was a Sacramento correspondent for KFF Health News until September 2018.
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About a quarter of fraud investigator positions at the state Department of Insurance are open, and Steve Poizner has made the vacancies a focus of his campaign for insurance commissioner. His opponent, Ricardo Lara, says chasing criminals isn’t the only solution to rising health care costs.
The number of diabetes drug prescriptions filled for low-income people enrolled in Medicaid rose sharply in states that expanded eligibility for the program under the Affordable Care Act, according to a new study.
The average increase in California is smaller than the double-digit hikes expected around the nation, due largely to a healthier mix of enrollees and more competition in its marketplace. Still, health insurance prices keep growing faster than wages and general inflation.
Xavier Becerra, who is leading an effort by at least 15 states to protect the law, said the Trump Administration's efforts to dismantle it endangers coverage for millions of Americans.
With the primary now over, health care may well emerge as an issue that helps voters distinguish between candidates for governor, attorney general and other offices in the general election.
The California Department of Insurance, headed by the commissioner, regulates only a small fraction of the market. But the job comes with a bully pulpit that amplifies its impact. Three of the four candidates would use it to push for a statewide single-payer system.
California and federal officials have cracked down on a major compounding pharmacy they say posed a threat to public safety, but their actions are worsening shortages of medications that doctors rely on to keep their patients out of pain.
A nationwide shortage of injectable opioid painkillers has left hospitals scrambling to find alternatives — in some cases leading to dosage mistakes that may harm patients.
California’s health insurers trotted out a heart-healthy character with an ulterior motive — taking a dig at drugmakers.
Fentanyl, a significant cause of overdoses and deaths across the country, has begun showing up in California street drugs. State health officials have responded with a bold but controversial policy: paying for test strips so users can check their stash.
States that opt to change their Medicaid program must figure out how to delineate who is covered by the new mandate, how to enforce the rules and how to handle the people seeking exemptions.
Fatalities are climbing in states that have been flooded by the deadly opioid fentanyl, but are remaining flat — or even falling — in many Western states, where the drug has not yet been as common as other parts of the country.
Emergency room doctors are seeing a growing number of marijuana users with a mysterious condition that causes extreme vomiting and abdominal pain.
One Northern California physician is a foot soldier in the fight against a surge of hepatitis C, mainly among young drug users who share infected needles.
State leaders vow to protect consumers from a presidential order to resurrect a health plan model that they say could destabilize the insurance market.
Doctors and pharmacists in Northern California are emulating drug company sales reps with a fresh purpose in mind: They visit medical offices in the hardest-hit counties to change their peers' prescribing habits and curtail the use of painkillers.
They say it will help reduce unnecessary ER visits and ensure better follow-up care. It’s also good P.R., and helps them meet their obligations to provide benefits to the community in exchange for significant tax breaks.
Several state-based exchanges and the District of Columbia will allow people more than the 45 days set by the Trump administration.
State lawmakers in California have an answer: legislation that would require your new insurer to keep paying for your current doctors even if they’re not in the network.
The nation’s second-largest insurer is shrinking its presence on Obamacare exchanges and in the broader individual market in response to prevailing uncertainty. California is just the latest — and the biggest — example.
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