Consumer health care affordability has deteriorated over the past two decades in California due to rising premiums along with increasingly common and increasingly large deductibles for job-based coverage. This report documents these trends and their implications for Californian’s health and financial well-being, and recommends how California’s new Office of Health Care Affordability can monitor consumer affordability metrics in order to ensure that consumers benefit from the office’s efforts to control growth in per capita health care spending.

Monterey County has some of the highest hospital costs in the state, and working families are struggling to pay their health care bills. To better understand why health care costs are so high in this Central Coast county, there is an urgent need to collect and analyze data that can help point to causes and solutions to the problem.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) currently being considered by Congress would improve health care affordability for many Californians by addressing high and rising drug prices and by extending the improved premium affordability assistance to Covered California enrollees that began in 2021. The extension of federal premium assistance would also unlock additional state-financed affordability help to reduce how much Covered California enrollees pay out-of-pocket when they access care.

Testimony from Assembly hearing on California’s current health care system.

Instead of cost containment, the most likely outcome of the excise tax is that workers will bear the brunt of this tax through increased copays and deductibles.

Testimony from Assembly hearing on California’s current health care system.

Rising specialty drug costs pose a substantial problem for the California state budget and the problem will continue to grow. While these trends are of concern to all payers, this brief focuses on the implications for California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, using the example of Sovaldi, a treatment for hepatitis C.

Beginning in 2020 the Affordable Care Act will implement an excise tax on “high cost” job-based health insurance—single plans with yearly premiums exceeding the equivalent of $10,200 in 2018 and…

Beginning in 2018 the Affordable Care Act will implement an excise tax on “high cost” job-based health insurance—single plans with yearly premiums exceeding $10,200 and family plans with premiums exceeding…

Beginning in 2018 the Affordable Care Act will implement an excise tax on “high cost” job-based health insurance—single plans with yearly premiums exceeding $10,200 and family plans with premiums exceeding…

Berkeley Blog post. Some of the savings from health savings accounts turns out to have been illusory after all.

Benefit-based interventions to address chronic disease compliance generally involve one of two approaches. The most common strategy is to exempt classes of drugs from copayments or coinsurance; a less tested strategy is to exempt classes of patients (i.e., diabetics) from cost sharing. Do such interventions improve health outcomes, and do they save money?

Using actuarial and membership data, we documented changes in the rates of health care eligibility, enrollment, and coverage, and in workforce turnover and demographics from 2003 to 2006. Based on our survey responses, we compared differences between incumbent workers and new hires with regard to access to and utilization of health care.