Sutter Health agreed to pay $575 million in antitrust settlement. Now judge has weighed in
Sacramento Bee 3/11/2021 Dale Kasler, The Sacramento Bee
Mar. 10 A landmark $575 million settlement by Sutter Health over the Sacramento medical giant s business practices received a judge s preliminary approval Tuesday.
Popular Searches
A year ago, Sutter agreed to pay $575 million to settle antitrust claims brought by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. The deal also requires Sutter to change its relationships with insurance companies, employers and other key players in the health care industry, and have its business operations monitored for a decade.
Becerra s office charged that Sutter used its considerable market muscle a system with 24 hospitals, 12,000 doctors and 35 outpatient centers to bend insurance companies and employers to its will. Its practices skewed medical costs throughout Northern California; Becerra cited one study showing that a Cesare
Who is Xavier Becerra? What his California record reveals about Biden’s top health pick
Ben Christopher
CalMatters
If you know one thing about California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s career, it’s that he spent a lot of it suing then-President Donald Trump. For those keeping score (we were), Becerra took the Trump administration to court a whopping 110 times, making him a speartip of the anti-Trump resistance.
On Tuesday, the national spotlight on him is sure to grow even hotter, as the U.S. Senate begins hearings on whether to confirm his nomination by President Joe Biden to head the sprawling Health and Human Services Department. It’s an important job, even when the nation isn’t struggling to overcome a dual pandemic and recession.
KHN’s ‘What the health?’: Staffing up at HHS
More than a month into President Joe Biden’s term, nominees to fill some of the top posts at the Department of Health and Human Services are finally getting confirmation hearings in the Senate, starting with the nominee for secretary, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Barring something unexpected, it appears that Becerra, along with the surgeon general nominee, Vivek Murthy, and the nominee for assistant secretary for health, Rachel Levine, will all be confirmed, despite criticisms raised by some Republicans.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging the Trump administration s rules for the federal family planning program that effectively evicted Planned Parenthood from participation. And the Biden administration asked the court to cancel oral arguments scheduled for late March about work requirements approved by the Trump administration for adult Medicaid recipients in some states.
ADVERTISEMENT
Her willingness to go after Republicans in strong terms on Twitter was always going to be a problem, the skeptics say, especially with the Senate split 50-50. Tanden has her fair share of enemies on the left as well. She is synonymous with the party’s Clintonite center-left and has at times been eager to pick fights online with supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders
Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has not said how he would vote on her nomination. He spoke with Tanden earlier this week to tell her that her hearing before his committee was being postponed.