Health

When Californians go to the polls this November, they’ll weigh-in on a contentious health care topic amplified by presidential campaigns: prescription drug prices. A state ballot initiative, Proposition 61, would restrict California health programs from paying more for a prescription drug than what’s paid by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which is widely cited […]

SACRAMENTO — In a small room at a neighborhood clinic in Sacramento, a handful of hepatitis C patients wait to see their physician, hoping they’ll be found sick enough to be approved for a cure. The low-income patients hope to be prescribed new breakthrough drugs, such as Sovaldi or Harvoni, which offer cures with almost […]

NOTE: Somebody redirected this to medium.com version. Doing the same here. What’s behind the jaw-dropping cost of new “specialty drugs” like Orkambi, which has a sticker price of $259,000 per year for cystic fibrosis patients? Orkambi, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last July, is expected to take almost $36 million […]

Private health plans invoiced the state of California $387.5 million to cover high-cost hepatitis C treatments in Medi-Cal between July 2014 and November 2015, when just 3,624 patients received the treatments, according to the California Department of Health Care Services. The state’s supplemental payments started after managed care plans that cover health services for almost […]

California will be a flashpoint in the policy debate this year around reining in the cost of high-priced prescription drugs. A measure expected to be before voters this November would restrict the state’s payments for drugs to no more than the lowest prices paid for the same drug by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. […]

A strange thing is happening in Sacramento: voices on the political left and right are calling for the state to spend more money on services for Californians with developmental disabilities. The message is coming from Republican legislators, who have delivered boxes of petitions to Gov. Jerry Brown’s office, as well as labor unions that have […]

The Catholic Church was a player in two of the biggest bills California lawmakers grappled with this year, working to push politicians to the left in one case, and to the right in another. Many religious groups lobby the Legislature on a host of issues. But it was unusual for one to be so visible […]