The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
Harriet Blair Rowan was a digital reporter for 51ÊÓƵ Health News until February 2020.
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Both sides in the contentious and expensive battle over California’s Proposition 8 are cherry-picking the facts ahead of Tuesday’s vote as dialysis companies spend record amounts to persuade voters through ads.
Dialysis companies have contributed more than $110 million to defeat an initiative on California’s Nov. 6 ballot that would limit their profits — breaking the $109 million record set by the pharmaceutical industry in 2016.
The measure, which will appear on the November ballot, seeks to cap industry profits. The SEIU-UHW union has raised almost $17 million, but opponents from the industry have invested more than four times that.
A coalition of Republican states has launched a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, including provisions requiring insurers to offer coverage to people with preexisting conditions without raising rates. An analysis shows that some of these states have the highest proportion of such residents.
Rates of gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia in California have shot up 45 percent over five years, resulting in 30 syphilis-related stillbirths in 2017 alone, new state data show.
The Golden State ranks near the bottom in its enrollment of eligible people in the food assistance program known as SNAP. Now state officials want to tap its robust Medicaid rolls to boost SNAP signups. Â
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