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  • Anthem Blue Cross asked to justify controversial rate hikes
    Feb 8, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    Many policyholders say the rate hikes are the largest they can remember. Sebelius said that Anthem's "strong financial position" made the increases "even more difficult to understand." She cited recent profit reported by its Indianapolis-based parent company, WellPoint Inc. I am aware that the State of California is investigating this matter, and urge Anthem Blue Cross to cooperate fully.
  • California cracks down on discount health plans
    Feb 8, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    Dev GnanaDev, immediate past president of the California Medical Assn. Some plans do offer discounts on doctor and hospital care. Discount health plans sell their services in all 50 states.
  • GOP rivals in governor's race target welfare costs
    Feb 8, 2010 — The Sacramento Bee
    General fund expenditures proposed for the next fiscal year amount to $82.9 billion. Gov.
  • Health secretary asks Anthem Blue Cross to justify its rate increases
    Feb 8, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    But brokers who sell these policies say the increases are many and large. I am aware that the state of California is investigating this matter, and urge Anthem Blue Cross to cooperate fully.
  • Health-care reform -- a plan in search of a strategy
    Feb 8, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    Democrats in Congress _ and on Obama's own staff _ are divided over what the next step should be. The Senate passed a bill that didn't increase taxes on the wealthy but levied a fee on high-end "Cadillac" insurance plans, and offered smaller subsidies. The "Cadillac tax" can be scaled back, but it will be hard to finance healthcare reform without some taxes.
  • Obama to invite GOP to healthcare summit
    Feb 8, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    But efforts to forge a consensus amenable to both chambers stalled after Democrats lost their 60-vote supermajority in the Senate.
  • OPINION
    Feb 8, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    The Senate passed a bill that didn't increase taxes on the wealthy but levied a fee on high-end "Cadillac" insurance plans, and offered smaller subsidies. And the polls on healthcare look particularly brutal. The "Cadillac tax" can be scaled back, but it will be hard to finance healthcare reform without some taxes.
  • Pajaro Valley schools scrape by with fewer workers
    Feb 8, 2010 — Santa Cruz Sentinel
    It's heartbreaking." Custodians aren't the only Pajaro Valley staff stretched thin as state education spending has declined. Since 2003, the county's largest school district has slashed spending nearly $45 million. Middle school counselors, elementary school assistant principals, psychologists, high school clerks also were hit.
  • The latest Obama healthcare plan
    Feb 8, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    The Times editorial board on Monday urged Democrats to add more meaningful cost controls to their healthcare reform bill before trying to punch it through Congress. The Republicans' counterproposals for making insurance available to more people would yield barely a 5% increase in the number of insured over the coming decade, according to the CBO. Instead, the event seems designed to lay the groundwork for getting the existing Democratic healthcare legislation moving again.
  • Welfare issue becomes a hot issue in governor's race
    Feb 8, 2010 — San Jose Mercury News
    Arnold Schwarzenegger, who for years has proposed major changes in CalWorks, the state's welfare-to-work program. The benefit today is 17 percent lower in real dollars than it was in 1996, when Clinton's landmark welfare reform law passed, Schott said. But unlike Poizner, she is against "full-family sanctions." The presumed Democratic nominee for governor, Attorney General Jerry Brown, has not yet declared his candidacy or issued any policy pronouncements.
  • 'Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization' by Steven Solomon
    Feb 7, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    The world's earliest empires, in Mesopotamia and Egypt, were what Solomon calls "hydraulic states": land-oriented, focused on river irrigation and canals, run by centralized, authoritarian governments. Irrigated farmland becomes salinized and unproductive; dams silt up; the supply of drinkable water is no longer sufficient. Despite an onslaught of sobering statistics in Part 4, "The Age of Scarcity," Solomon's overall tone is cautiously optimistic.
  • California likely must forge own way on health, forum experts say
    Feb 7, 2010 — The Sacramento Bee
    ...to remake the country's health care system. Instead, some of the state's top health care experts, convening for a health care forum in Sacramento, expressed uncertainty about whether California should just move ahead with its own plan to cover the state's nearly 7 million uninsured. "This is an awkward time to be having this conversation," noted Kim Belshe, the state's director of health and human services. With the future of a federal health care overhaul now steeped in...
  • Emergency response startup woos customers
    Feb 7, 2010 — North County Times
    A big red button contacts an emergency care specialist who determines whether medical care should be sent immediately to the home. That still costs the taxpayers and the insurance companies money." With Instant Care, people can get immediate, personal attention over the phone, with professionals who know their medical histories, Darling said. Strokes and heart attacks require immediate attention, or the rate of death and permanent injury rises sharply, he said.
  • Valley strives to improve health illiteracy
    Feb 7, 2010 — The Fresno Bee
    Her prescription called for her to take one warfarin pill a day. Instead, Vang, now 68, mistakenly took three pills daily for 10 days. They operated on Vang's brain to release pressure from the blood that was pooling inside her head. Vang spent weeks in the hospital.
  • Women headed to Sacramento to rail against cuts to cancer program
    Feb 7, 2010 — San Bernardino County Sun
    Lum said that nobody likes to hear the "R" word -- rationing. But most effective way to screen for breast cancer with mammograms is for ages 50 and above. "This is not ideal.
  • Obama tries to rally Democrats, defends healthcare overhaul
    Feb 6, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    Steven Ybarra, a former DNC member from Sacramento, said in an interview: "The DNC is a disaster. Does anybody know who the chairman of the Democratic National Committee is?" Ybarra said Obama should install as the head of the DNC his 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe. In this worrisome environment, Obama tried to rally the party by saying it was no time to abandon the bold agenda charted at the beginning of his administration.
  • Anthem Blue Cross dramatically raising rates for Californians with individual health policies
    Feb 5, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    California's largest for-profit health insurer is moving to dramatically raise rates for customers with individual policies, setting off a furor among policyholders and prompting state insurance regulators to investigate. Anthem is not the only health insurer imposing double-digit rate increases. Competitors such as Blue Shield of California and Aetna also have raised premiums significantly in recent years, insurance brokers said.
  • EDITORIAL
    Feb 5, 2010 — Los Angeles Times
    It was more of a lukewarm, milquetoast, noncommittal sentence or two in which the president mentioned something about "strengthening" trade. Continued inaction, by contrast, would endanger several hundred thousand jobs, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Exports and international trade may be arcane topics to Americans preoccupied with economic concerns nearer to home: keeping a job, finding a job, making car payments or avoiding foreclosure.
  • Nonprofits serving children and homeless receive grants from Mercy Medical Center Merced
    Feb 5, 2010 — Merced Sun-Star
    We will be able to use this money for those services." Community Social Model Advocates also got a grant from Mercy for the homeless. The requested amount of money was more than $200,000, but the hospital had only $77,956 available.
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