Federally qualified health centers from California to Michigan are mired in a bureaucratic mess over how they should be paid under Medicaid for each dose of covid vaccine given. In California alone, clinics await reimbursement for at least 1 million shots, causing a “massive cash flow problem.”
Health care workers already bore the brunt of workplace violence in the U.S. Now, tensions from an exhausting pandemic are spilling over into hospitals.
Opponents of free needle programs in California are using environmental regulations to shut them down. On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will end that strategy.
Dr. Paula Braveman, director of UCSF’s Center on Social Disparities in Health, shares her insights on a provocative new study that identifies racism as a decisive factor in the gap in preterm birth rates between Black and white women.
As the pandemic has raged so has the country’s drug epidemic. California is looking to a controversial solution for certain drug users, but despite its effectiveness, critics have scoffed at the idea calling it unethical or a bribe.
Officials are enthusiastic about the Allcove initiative, modeled on an Australian program. But it will need to show effectiveness and find funding.
Mimi Hall and Dr. Gail Newel, health director and health officer for Santa Cruz County, California, will receive PEN America’s 2021 PEN/Benenson Courage Award for soldiering forward in their work amid death threats and personal attacks.
Drought, wildfires, extreme heat: California lawmakers cast climate change as the culprit in an emerging series of public health threats, setting aside billions to help communities respond. But they stopped short of more aggressively reducing the state’s share of the greenhouse emissions warming the planet.
The nine commercial insurers in Medi-Cal must reapply by submitting bids for new contracts. The state hopes the process will improve care for low-income residents and tighten accountability, something critics say has been missing.
Peter Lee helped create Covered California, which has been lauded as a national example among the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces, and he fiercely opposed Republican efforts to repeal the federal health reform law.
