Health

Hospitals all over California are closing their maternity wards, including in dense cities like Los Angeles and in more remote communities in the Sierra Nevada.

More than half a million California health care workers are expected to see a pay increase in January thanks to a law raising the minimum wage for their industry. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the law without a clear estimate about how much it would cost the state.

New vaccines for RSV and an updated booster for COVID-19 give Californians more tools to protect themselves from respiratory viruses this fall.

Black women are three times more likely than any other women to die during or immediately after pregnancy. California lawmakers passed a law in 2019 requiring hospitals to train labor and delivery staff on unconscious bias in medicine.

A 2020 California law expanded the number of mental health conditions that insurers must cover. Now, lawmakers are reviewing whether the law is working as intended.

Unions at Kaiser Permanente put pressure on the health care giant to raise pay and address what they called understaffing during two strikes over the past year. The results reflected labor’s power in California.

More than 400,000 Californians are expected to get a pay increase under the new law, which gradually raises the minimum wage to $25 an hour for health care employees.

More than 30 states require insurers to provide some level of coverage for kids’ hearing aids. California isn’t one of them, and Gov. Newsom for the second time has vetoed a bill to close that gap.

Kaiser patients waited 19 days for follow-up mental health appointments in 2019, nine days longer than state law permits. The settlement includes the largest-ever penalty issued by California’s behavioral health regulator.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a cap on insulin copayments, disappointing California diabetics who sought relief on prescription medication costs.