Commemorations for the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks began in New York late last week as they have for multiple years, with twin beams of light piercing the night sky, a tribute to those lost in the World Trade Center that could be seen across the region. Yet even 16 years after...
Robert Menendez, enamored of a luxury lifestyle that he couldn’t afford, misused his perch in the Senate to repeatedly help a prominent eye doctor in exchange for lavish hotel stays and other gifts, federal prosecutors said Monday at the start of the first corruption trial of a sitting U.S. senator...
After Olympus Corp. paid to fly three doctors from a prominent California hospital to Japan for a weeklong vacation, one of the physicians thanked the company for providing them with “so much extra entertainment that we did not expect.”The expense-paid trip was just one of the dozens of illegal...
In Los Angeles County, signing up for Medi-Cal is often followed by a phone book-sized directory landing on your doorstep. The 2017 directory for L.A. Care, a local Medi-Cal health plan, is 2,546 pages of doctors’ names listed by city, by specialty — anesthesiologists, gastroenterologists, ophthalmologists....
With interest growing among congressional Republicans and Democrats in modifying the Affordable Care Act to bolster the nation’s health insurance markets, states are emerging as potential models for bipartisan cooperation. The political battling over the 2010 healthcare law, widely known as Obamacare,...
The Salt Lake City Police Department is making changes after an officer dragged a screaming nurse out of a hospital in handcuffs when she refused to allow blood to be drawn from an unconscious patient. Nurse Alex Wubbels followed hospital policy and advice from her bosses when she told police Det....
President Trump talks incessantly about how the Affordable Care Act has failed. He has threatened to make it “implode.” Now he has taken a major step toward making his own predictions and threats come true. The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it is cutting the advertising...
Affirming its disdain for "Obamacare," the Trump administration Thursday announced sharp cuts in programs promoting healthcare enrollment under the Affordable Care Act for next year. Advertising will be cut to $10 million, down from $100 million spent on 2017 signups, Health and Human Services...
After standing on the sidelines while a major public health crisis developed, the Food and Drug Administration finally has launched what could be a major crackdown on clinics hawking questionable and potentially dangerous stem cell therapies. The FDA announced Monday that it had seized nearly 500...
Retiree Leslie Robinson-Stone and her husband enjoyed a weeklong, all-expenses-paid trip to a luxury resort — all thanks to the county she worked for. The couple also received more than a thousand dollars in spending money and a personal concierge, who attended to their every need. For Santa Barbara...
U.S. stocks finished little changed Monday as investors focused on the effects of Tropical Storm Harvey. Insurance companies and oil drillers stumbled while refineries rose along with gasoline prices. With August coming to a close, Monday was one of Wall Street's quietest days of the year. Biotech...
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tends toward restraint in public comments, but his observation that President Trump, as a newcomer to politics, had “excessive expectations” about the legislative process provoked an unexpected war with the White House that shows no signs of easing. Trump,...
Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan is better acquainted than most Democrats with the financially stressed voters who helped carry Donald Trump to the White House. He comes home to them every week. Throngs of erstwhile Democrats voted for Trump in Ryan’s Rust Belt district in Youngstown, and they cheered his return...
Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Thursday, Aug. 24, and here’s what’s happening across California: TOP STORIES A mentally ill inmate's last days For 46 hours, Andrew Holland’s legs and arms were shackled to a chair in the San Luis Obispo County Jail cell. The...
Charles Cadwallader didn't vote for Trump. He hasn’t cast a ballot for a presidential candidate, he said, since voting for Bill Clinton in 1992. When Newt Gingrich and the Republicans engaged in showdowns with Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he checked out. He’d had enough. Political...
Healthcare, tax reform and the debt ceiling probably will be among the highest-profile issues when Congress returns from a monthlong recess Sept. 5. But Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates already have served notice that they’re also going to keep a spotlight on protecting people’s right...
Six months after Dr. Carmen Puliafito stepped down as dean of USC’s medical school, he was called by the university to give sworn testimony as a witness in a lawsuit the institution was facing. It was a sensitive matter with hundreds of millions of dollars potentially at stake, and two attorneys...
With Republicans seeming to have abandoned their repeal-or-bust attack on the Affordable Care Act, the path to improving Americans' health coverage is wide open. That has given the idea of single-payer a jump-start. But it hasn’t done much to clarify the most important question: How do we get there...
Question: After my husband receives his annual review and cost-of-living raise, he will be in a new pay bracket. When this happens, the cost of his health insurance will increase as well -- way beyond the raise he would receive -- so he will be bringing home significantly less in his paycheck....
The inherent goodness of people was made clear this week when a pair of readers offered to pay for a 75-year-old Encino man’s prescription meds after the drug maker imposed a $1,100 deductible to be eligible for financial assistance. Meanwhile, the warped priorities of our for-profit healthcare...
The Trump administration, faced with increasing pressure from Republican members of Congress, backed away from causing an immediate crisis in healthcare marketplaces and agreed Wednesday to continue making payments to insurance companies that are widely viewed as critical to keeping the industry...
The federal deficit would swell and premiums for some health plans would rise sharply if the Trump administration makes good on a threat to cut off subsidies for low- and medium-income buyers of health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday. The report from the nonpartisan budget...
The Congressional Budget Office weighed in Tuesday with another of its long-awaited analyses of aspects of repealing or tinkering with the Affordable Care Act. This time the topic is the ACA’s cost-sharing reduction subsidies, which reduce deductibles and co-pays for the lowest-income buyers of...
Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Tuesday, Aug. 15, and here’s what’s happening across California: TOP STORIES After the fire Nearly 300 families lost homes in the Erskine fire, the most destructive wildfire in Kern County history. The blaze, which erupted June...
For 14 years, Encino resident Ed Wright received an expensive prescription medication for free through a drug-industry program intended to assist people with limited or fixed incomes. Now he’s rationing his doses after a change to the program that imposed a $1,100 deductible before he can get a...
The chief executive of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. publicly resigned from a White House manufacturing council on Monday, declaring he felt “a responsibility to take a stand against intolerance and extremism.” The move by Kenneth Frazier, one of corporate America’s leading African American...
The effort by congressional Republicans and the Trump White House to sabotage the Affordable Care Act reached another milestone Friday when the big insurer Anthem announced it will be pulling out of Virginia’s ACA marketplace next year. Anthem has been the biggest insurer in the Virginia individual...
Los Angeles billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong’s NantHealth Inc. said it would cut about 300 employees and sell some assets as the biotech company looks to focus on artificial intelligence for cancer treatment. The Culver City company said Thursday that it signed an agreement to sell its provider...
Republicans tried, after the collapse of their long campaign to end Obamacare, to put a good face forward as they pressed on to tax reform and other issues on their ambitious legislative agenda. But they just couldn’t help themselves. The blame game launched quickly. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan...
Actions by the Trump administration are triggering double-digit premium increases on individual health insurance policies purchased by many people, according to a nonpartisan study. The analysis released Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that mixed signals from President Trump have...
The Trump administration, thwarted in several attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, notably shifted tone Wednesday, opening the door for a bipartisan plan to "fix" the law. The change came even as a fight escalated between President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)...
President Trump emphasized the need for stepped-up law enforcement to combat the nation’s opioid problem Tuesday, an approach that is at odds with a report released last week by the special commission he appointed to address abuse. “Strong law enforcement is absolutely vital to having a drug-free...
Alexander Burgos Mejia was in his bunk at the Adelanto Detention Facility on a Tuesday evening in July when he heard a guard scream. Walking into a common room, Burgos Mejia saw a man hanging from the second floor with a bedsheet around his neck, he recalled in an interview. A female guard was...
The main thread of the Republican effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act may have been snipped apart on the Senate floor late last month, but vestiges of its campaign of vandalism still remain. On Friday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., kicked away one of its legs in a $52-million ruling...
Welcome to California Inc., the weekly newsletter of the L.A. Times Business Section. I'm Business columnist David Lazarus, and here's a rundown of upcoming stories this week and the highlights of last week. The trend continues: Steady if unspectacular economic growth. On Friday, the Labor Department...
They’re going away mad. As President Trump and the Republicans who control Congress leave Washington for their separate August breaks, theirs is a marriage on the rocks, an estrangement that bodes ill for the party’s ambitious agenda going forward. Lawmakers and the president blame each other for...
Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It’s Wednesday, Aug. 2, and here’s what’s happening across California: TOP STORIES Premiums to rise Monthly premiums for California health insurance plans sold under the Affordable Care Act will rise by an average of 12.5% next year....
President Trump is facing pushback from Republican senators, who seem set to follow their own path — at least this week. I'm Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times. Here are some story lines I don't want you to miss today. TOP STORIES Will the Senate Return Us to Comity and Civility?...