State regulators slammed Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in a report released by the Department of Managed Health Tuesday. Tracy Seipel has the story at the San Jose Mercury News.
“Two major health insurers selling policies on the Covered California insurance exchange violated state law over the last year when they listed names of doctors in online directories who were not part of their networks….
“Eighteen percent of the physicians listed by Blue Shield were not at the location listed in the provider directory…. Twelve and a half percent of the physicians listed by Anthem were not at the location listed in the provider directory."
Public pensions dodged another bullet as the city of San Bernardino agreed to pay city pensions in full despite bankruptcy. From Dale Kasler at the Sacramento Bee:
“In a filing Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Riverside, lawyers for the city said San Bernardino intends to “ratify in full the City’s relationship with CalPERS.”
“After filing for bankruptcy in 2012, the city withheld its pension payments from CalPERS for several months, racking up a past-due account of roughly $14 million. Last fall, after months of legal jousting, the city and CalPERS said they had reached a tentative settlement. But neither side refused to divulge any details until Monday.”
A new report from the Pew Research Center reveals that while the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States did not change appreciably between 2009-2012, California’s undocumented population declined in the same period. From Dan Walters at the Bee:
“California still has, by far, the nation’s largest population of illegal immigrants, but it declined between 2009 and 2012, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center….
“The estimated drop in California was fairly scant, down 50,000 to 2.45 million, about 6.4 percent of the state’s overall population. However, Pew says illegal immigrants are 9.4 percent of California’s labor force, second only to Nevada’s 10.2 percent.”
Most of California was settled on the premise of predictable water supplies. But the state has a history of epic droughts – sometimes lasting for centuries. Could we be at the beginning of a long-term dry era? KQED’s Amy Standen offers an extensive look at what cities might do in the face of extreme drought.
“[Most] Californians live in cities designed, to a great extent, on the promise of nearly endless water, imported from wetter parts of the state via massive engineering projects like the California State Water Project.
“It’s not hard to imagine a collision looming between how we expect water to behave — piped, channelized, pumped according to our needs — and how it may increasingly behave in coming years — sporadic, unpredictable, sometimes too much, sometimes too little.”
Capitol Weekly’s John Howard reports that the FPPC found violations involving insufficient disclosure in 19 advertisements before election day.
“’All of these corrections resulted in increased availability of information about who was paying for these ballot measures being provided to voters before the election,’ Gary Winuk, the Fair Political Practices Commission’s enforcement chief, wrote in a memo to the commission. The FPPC enforces the state’s campaign disclosure rules.”
And, from the worst-personals-ad-of-all-time file: this dude in Jacksonville, North Carolina is trying to hook up with the delivery-room nurse who just helped his wife deliver their son. From the Jacksonville Craigslist’s “Missed Connections” section:
“This is probably a long shot but you were the nurse taking care of my wife while she was having our baby. I enjoyed our eye contact and would really like to talk to you more. Maybe tomorrow I will be there most of the day and I will bump in to you in the hall way or see you at the nurse station.”
Good luck with that…..