L.A. County health plan fined $55M for health care failures

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California regulators have issued $55 million in fines against L.A. Care, the nation’s largest publicly operated health plan, for failing to authorize care for thousands of poor and at-risk members. The unprecedented fines were announced Friday by two state health regulatory agencies, which said the Los Angeles County plan had systemic failures thyat caused health-threatening delays. L.A. Care has about 2.5 million members, many of them low-income. Investigators said many had to wait months for approval of specialist care, including suffering cancer patients. L.A. Care says it’s been dealing with problems and says it will challenge the fines, calling them “arbitrary and unnecessarily punitive.”