The Chinatown Service Center is the largest community-based Chinese-American health and human service organization in Southern California, serving immigrants, refugees and others in need of assistance. The center, which largely serves those who have nowhere else to go, would not be a robust social or medical refuge if it were not for the Affordable Care Act.
The state has proposed protections for schools in rural areas for the first time. Yet the new regulations, slated to go into effect in January 2018, don’t go far enough, according to teachers and environmental groups.
Originally prescribed opioids for foot pain, 67-year-old veteran nurse George Ates eventually found himself on a fentanyl patch that would swiftly kill someone who hadn’t built up a high tolerance to opioids. On the surface, Ates appears to be another of the millions of Americans caught up in the nation’s epidemic of opioid drug use. While one may think of the phenomenon as on that has mostly swept up younger adults, Ates’ struggles are actually commonplace at California’s hospitals.
Emergency rooms are chaotic, noisy and not staffed to care for children with acute mental health needs. Yet, every year nearly 13% of ER visits are due to mental health disorders – more than any other type of illness.
After her Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis in 2007, Julie Williams decided to commute to work on a bike to improve her health. She quickly found it improved her physical, mental, and emotional well-being.
Amidst great uncertainty about federal health policy, Covered California announced Tuesday that insurance premiums on the state-run exchange will rise on average 12.5 percent next year, an increase that is slightly lower than in 2017. The agency said it also has a containment plan should the Trump administration cease to provide cost-sharing subsidies for lower-income exchange enrollees.
The California department that runs the state’s low-income health program released updated rules last week that spell out how far patients may need to travel to see a doctor. Medi-Cal managed-care health plans, which cover more than a quarter of Californians, will be required to have primary-care doctors within 10 miles or 30 minutes from patients’ homes.
People who rely on Medi-Cal for their health insurance are finding it difficult to get critical care because the state’s reimbursement rates to doctors are unreasonably low, a new lawsuit alleges. While the problem affects all age groups, older Californians find it especially
Samuel Raymond Curtis is very familiar with hospital stays. For the past two years, the 58-year-old homeless man who suffers from problems related to a hernia has been in and out of hospitals in Ventura County more times than he can count. Each time he got treated and released back onto the streets, he said. It wasn’t long before his health started deteriorating again. “I’d
One of California’s most substantial voices to weigh in on the consequences of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act wasn’t a consumer activist, politician or economist. It was the state’s health insurance exchange. Almost immediately after Donald Trump was sworn in as President, Covered California started issuing a series of reports detailing how the state’s residents would either lose their insurance or be left