All 3,500 residents in Ferris will get free basic health services when a new program goes into place within the next six months. "I work for a very small insurance, and so they don't offer health care. My husband is self-employed and so when our kids get sick, or you know we get sick, it costs us hundreds of dollars to go to the Doctor," said Ferris Resident Tiffany Rogers.
Washington has taken a significant step toward expanding health and dental insurance coverage to nearly all residents, particularly those who are undocumented. The Washington Health Benefit Exchange, the state’s health insurance marketplace, on Friday submitted a waiver application that, if approved, allows states to bypass or change some Affordable Care Act requirements.
Thanks to an experimental new program aimed at easing the state’s profound homelessness crisis, some Californians now can get housing help from an unlikely source: their health insurance plans. With the launch this year of CalAIM, California is reimagining medical coverage by marrying healthcare and housing statewide for the first time.
State lawmakers in New York along with a prominent health care union on Monday called for a 9.3% tax on insurance companies that move their profits out of state, with the revenue going to fund distressed health providers and boost frontline care. The tax proposal, however, is opposed by business organizations and health insurers as hurtful to the state's economy and constitutionally questionable.
Consumer and business advocacy groups have long decried rising health insurance premiums, warning that health care has become increasingly unaffordable. The Massachusetts Division of Insurance has responded to the cries for action with draft regulations that, advocates say, could slow the growth of premiums and increase transparency into the rate setting process for hundreds of thousands of individuals and small businesses.
