Health

California inches toward making it easier to compel treatment for mental illness, but serious questions remain. Among them: Do treatment options even exist?

We covered how Californians were affected by the workings — or non-workings — of their state government. Here are highlights:

In 2020, California will make health insurance mandatory — and charge a tax people to people without. For people who lack it now, there’s an upside: The state also will began giving subsidies to those who don’t qualify for assistance through the federal Obamacare program. In 2018, President Donald Trump announced that the federal government would […]

Striking clinicians — spotlighting complaints that patients with serious mental illness face long waits and inadequate care — lay blame at the doorstep of the state Department of Managed Health Care.

When she went to La Clinica de la Raza health center in Oakland for a routine checkup, the 54-year-old immigrant told her doctor she was under a lot of stress. Work had begun to dry up for her husband, a day laborer, and money was tight. Marta, who asked to be identified by a first […]

Kenda Williams, 51, went to West Coast Dental in Torrance to treat the shooting pain in her molar. She spent the day in a drug-induced haze. Williams later found out she had signed up for two credit cards that day to cover her dentist’s $9,055 bill. Unemployed and on Medi-Cal, the Los Angeles resident had […]

Laws require health plans to provide patients equal treatment for mental and physical needs. But "parity" is often elusive — and critics say the Legislature and health officials have failed to fix the problem.

Primary care doctors are a hot commodity across California. Students are being lured by full-ride scholarships to medical schools. New grads are specifically recruited for training residencies. And full-fledged doctors are being offered loan repayment programs to serve low-income residents or work in underserved areas. These efforts are intended to ease or stave off the […]

“You get exposed to a lot of stuff over the years, and the body takes a beatdown."

California lawmakers knew Assemblyman David Chiu's reproductive FACT Act had constitutional issues, but passed the NARAL-sponsored bill anyway. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned it, and the settlements in NIFLA v. Becerra have been a windfall for conservatives fighting reproductive rights here and nationally.