The issue of affordability has reignited a long-simmering battle between California’s medical industry and one of its largest health worker unions. SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, with approximately 120,000 members, has put forward two ballot initiatives to cap the pay of medical executives and require community clinics to spend the vast bulk of their revenues on…
The Trump administration has issued final rules on how states should ensure that millions of Medicaid enrollees prove they’re working or completing other activities, such as job training, volunteering, or being enrolled in an educational program. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released the rules on June 1. That deadline was set last year…
When Congress allowed covid-era subsidies for health insurance to expire, California used its own funds to offset the hike in Obamacare premium costs for residents with low incomes. But the reach has been limited. As Gov. Gavin Newsom negotiates his last budget with the legislature, the Democrat wants to offer financial help to more than…
By MIKE MAGEE Last week, policy wonks from the right and the left, finally found a topic they could agree on – Kids are no longer having (as many) kids. Specifically, teen pregnancies dropped an additional 10% in the US in 2025. This is an acceleration of a trend which began two decades ago. Teen births…
By KIM BELLARD It probably didn’t show up on your calendar, but Monday was World Ocean Day. It’s a day meant to catalyze “collective action for a healthy ocean and a stable climate,” and has been around since 2002 (although the U.N. didn’t officially recognize it until 2008). Its website claims a network of over…
President Donald Trump, who once declared he had “saved” flavored vapes, grew his stock holdings this year to as much as $1.64 million in tobacco giant Philip Morris. He also had holdings in Altria and a third leading tobacco company, though an apparent discrepancy in his disclosures clouds the extent of his investments. In 2025,…
When health economics emerged as a distinct discipline in the late 1960s, mainstream academic and policy paradigms widely presumed that competitive market mechanisms were structurally incompatible with medical delivery. Influenced by foundational ideas like Kenneth Arrow’s 1963 landmark paper emphasizing the pervasive friction of clinical uncertainty, early experts argued that society had to look almost…
Officials, environmental health advocates, and skin care industry groups are expressing hope that the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a sunscreen ingredient on June 9 — after consideration for two decades, and global use for nearly as long — will help restore Americans’ wavering faith in sunscreen. “Bemotrizinol has been used safely in Europe…
The looming impact of federal Medicaid cuts has reignited a long-simmering, costly battle between California’s medical industry and one of its largest health worker unions. SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, with approximately 120,000 members, has put forward two ballot initiatives to cap the pay of medical executives and require community clinics to spend the vast bulk…
SALT LAKE CITY — Ben Dowse hadn’t expected to treat measles when he became a doctor, but there he was, examining a newborn exposed to the virus in the womb. The infected mother had given birth just hours earlier. The hospital had alerted Dowse to the case before delivery, and he’d braced himself for the…