Disgusted with federal attacks on Obama-era health reforms, a broad coalition of organizations and advocacy groups is pushing the state legislature to enact a series of bills designed to expand health coverage in California and make it more affordable.
Health care advocates are always working on ways to make sure Medicaid is around to help people living in poverty. This is a good thing, but I also think it’s important to ask: Why do so many people require Medicaid? Why are so many people living and working in poverty? Why are we not working on more ways to lift people out of destitution?
Los Angeles County, the most populous county in California, is successfully using money from a state tax on millionaires to fund programs that help the mentally ill, according to a new report. These efforts have succeeded in reducing homelessness, incarceration and hospitalization among the mentally ill, and improved the wellbeing of people served by the programs.
The number of dental providers willing to treat Medi-Cal enrollees has decreased significantly in recent years, according to testimony state officials provided last week to the Hoover Commission, an independent state oversight agency.
California has a new addiction treatment approach that tackles substance-use disorder much like any other chronic disease, such as diabetes or heart disease. Patients receive ongoing checkups and support to help prevent relapse, and to catch and treat it quickly if it happens.
So far 10 counties have launched the new program, including Los Angeles, Riverside, San Francisco and San Luis Obispo. Another 30 counties are expected to follow suit this year.
Fourteen-year-old Sophia Gutierrez had seen gyms on television but never stepped foot in a real one, until she walked into Benjamin Franklin High School’s new fitness center last month.
Despite a recent expansion of benefits and boost in payments, Denti-Cal enrollees and their advocates say they are struggling to find dentists willing to see them.
These 7 million Californian adults are part of the state’s second-tier dental system, where participating dentists are few and far between, particularly in rural regions.
California is expected to weather federal changes to health insurance rules better than many other states, but it will still face declining enrollment and rising premiums, two new studies predict.
Beginning in 2008, as the nation was in the throes of the economic recession, California’s top leaders made a series of cuts to safety-net programs that sent many low-income residents in a downward spiral toward homelessness. While California’s economy has largely recovered since then, and the state’s food stamps and health programs have mostly been restored, the state’s welfare program has yet to see a reinvestment to pre-recession levels.
As the termination of DACA is challenged in courts throughout the country, the fate of roughly 800,000 DACA recipients remains in limbo. This causes such anxiety for the more than 400 students enrolled with DACA at UC Berkeley that the school expanded its mental health services.