Associated Press

Why reducing poverty — and stress — might be the key to better health

By Daniel Weintraub Look at the health data for just about any collection of neighborhoods in California and one thing will soon become clear: Poor people are sicker and, on average, die younger than people with higher incomes. The medical profession, social workers and health researchers have known this for a long time. But exactly why it is so remains, surprisingly, a mystery. Answering that

Despite progress, 250,000 Medi-Cal applicants still wait for coverage

Carlos Gutierrez of Berkeley thought his health care troubles were over when he received a letter from his county’s social service agency in May telling him he qualified for Medi-Cal. The 34-year-old single father of two had been without health insurance for months after losing his job as a trainer in car rental sales. He’d applied for health coverage through Covered California — the state’s health insurance exchange — and when the letter about Medi-Cal arrived he felt relieved.

Surfing the Wave of Aging Latinos

March marked a turning point in California’s ethnic breakdown: Latinos officially outnumbered the state’s white population. Meanwhile, the aging Latino population is one of the fastest-growing demographics nationally, thanks to “a very high life expectancy among Hispanics,” according to noted aging researcher S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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