“Dollars that were intended for a wide array of medical services started being gobbled up by just one drug,” said Charles Bacchi, president of an industry trade group.
An unlikely coalition of health insurers, labor and consumer advocates are pushing for controls on high-cost drugs in the nation's most populous state. “California is truly ground zero for this fight,” one advocate said. “It is clear Congress as a whole is not going to take meaningful action."
A complaint filed this week alleges that California is engaging in unlawful discrimination by paying some of the lowest reimbursement rates in the country to the state’s Medicaid providers. As some coverage pointed out, the notion that low rates are limiting access to doctors is “not unfounded."
For hundreds of thousands of Californians waiting for their Medicaid applications to be processed, affordable health coverage is still a dream. The delays, partly caused by tech glitches, come with real human costs for those in application limbo and in need of care.
