The Governor and Assembly Speaker have emerged from negotiations with a healthcare plan that needs to be sent back for major reconstructive surgery. The plan has some very good elements – such as preventing insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, a long-overdue expansion of children’s healthcare coverage and, potentially, the creation of the largest purchasing pool in the health insurance market outside of the federal government. But the proposal has major flaws that must be fixed before it has a chance of final approval by California voters. Read the full story on Daily Kos. Read more »

By The Milken Institute

In a groundbreaking study released by the Milken Institute, the annual economic impact on the U.S. economy of the most common chronic diseases is calculated to be more than $1 trillion, which could balloon to nearly $6 trillion by the middle of the century. Yet the news is not entirely grim because much of this cost is avoidable. "An Unhealthy America: The Economic Burden of Chronic Disease" brings to light for the first time what is often overlooked in the discussion of the impact of chronic disease — the economic loss associated with preventable illness and the cost to the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and American businesses in lost growth.

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