California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones on Wednesday slammed UnitedHealth Group — the nation’s largest private insurance company — over its decision to cut benefits and raise premiums for health plans used by close to 5,000 California small businesses. The combination of cuts and hikes would amount to a nearly eight percent rate hike for small business owners and their employees.

“At a time when small businesses are struggling to survive, UnitedHealthcare’s rate increase is just one more unwarranted economic burden on California’s small business owners and their employees,” said Jones. He estimated that close to 45,000 small business employees could be affected by the hikes.

Jones’ comments were quickly dismissed by UnitedHealth, as a spokesman argued that the annual increase would merely be two percent for customers. But that two percent figure likely only take into account the requested premium rate hike, not the cuts to benefits provided on relevant health plans. Previous, seemingly-arbitrary rate hikes by UnitedHealth and other insurers have led Jones to become a vocal advocate for greater insurance commission authority on the issue, and he has been pushing for the passage of a 2014 popular referendum that would “grant state officials the power to reject unreasonable rate increases for health coverage.”

This certainly isn’t the first time that UnitedHealth has engaged in profit-seeking behavior at the expense of government and employer health expenditures and workers’ benefits. The company recently complained that it wasn’t receiving enough government money despite massive profits and favorable Medicare reimbursement rates, and is one of several companies using Obamacare as a scapegoat for its extravagant rate increases.

In fact, arbitrary rate increases were par-for-the-course long before Obamacare’s passage, and the reform law actually contains protections against sticker shock and fallback measures for Americans who cannot afford private insurance coverage. But given UnitedHealth’s and other insurers’ quests for ever-increasing profits, many state insurance commissioners are looking to more closely scrutinize rate requests to see if they are reasonable.

Through a new state-sponsored initiative called the Condom Access Project, California children living in areas with high STI and teen birth rates will soon be able to get condoms — and instructions on how to use them — delivered for free to their doorsteps after ordering them online. The project is intended to stem the rising tide of teen births and sexually transmitted infections such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis in the Golden State.

The website for the service — TeenSource.org — includes information on teen mental and physical health support services, resources for family planning, and maps of facilities that conduct STI testing. Teens between the ages of 12 and 19 will be able to receive as many as ten free condoms per month through the site, which also points users to additional free condom resources and clinics. Once an order is placed, “a package of condoms, lubricant and an educational pamphlet arrives at teenagers’ homes in a nondescript yellow envelope” within several days.

Critics and abstinence-education advocates have lashed out at the effort, asserting that “the overwhelming majority of parents” would be opposed to such a service — but given the failure of abstinence-only sex education, the difficulty of accessing contraception, and California’s recent health trends, it may be necessary one. According to comprehensive data on the California Department of Public Health’s website, California teenage girls between the ages of 10 and 19 make up about 30 percent of all chlamydia and gonorrhea cases, and the teen live birth rate is about 3.5 percent. Those numbers represent rises over previous years, and are comprised of a disproportionate number of poor and minority populations.

Campaigns to prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted infections are also important considering the rise of antibiotic resistant pathogens. Researchers recently identified the first cases of gonorrhea — the second-most common STI — that are immune to antibiotics.

In an emotional press conference on Monday, Lisa Pott, whose stepdaughter Audrie killed herself last fall after allegedly being raped, read a series of Audrie’s Facebook messages sent shortly before her suicide: “My life is ruined. I can’t do anything to fix it. I just want this to go away. My life is over. The people I thought I could trust f-ed me over and then tried to lie to cover it up. I have a reputation for a night I don’t even remember and the whole school knows.”

Pott’s parents are still trying to piece together what events led to the 15-year-old girl’s rape and suicide. Three 16-year-old boys were arrested last week for allegedly gang raping the 15-year-old girl at a party and texting photos of the crime to friends. According to newly released police reports, the boys also wrote humiliating messages all over Pott’s body because they thought it was funny:

The sheriff’s report also describes writing on her breast that “(blank) was here” — referring to another boy at the party who was not in the bedroom — and the drawing of arrows and circles and other scribbles all over her body and close to her genitalia. [...]

A witness told investigators that Audrie “was scared because someone had put her in a room and took off her clothes, leaving her underwear on.” One of the suspects told an investigator he thought it had been funny to draw all over Audrie, the sheriff’s report says.

The court documents highlight the difficulty investigators had in convincing students who were at the party — and their parents — to tell the truth. One girl told investigators, “I just don’t want to throw anyone under the bus.”
Audrie’s father, Larry Pott, implored students to come forward and “do the right thing” to get to the truth of what happened and why and who knew.

At the time of the alleged assault, all four students attended Saratoga High School in California together. Pott’s Facebook messages also revealed she did not know why she had woken up with her pants off, and believed the boys had sent the photo of her assault to the entire school. The boys will face a juvenile court on charges of misdemeanor sexual battery, felony distribution of child pornography and felony forcible sexual penetration. Pott’s parents also plan to sue them in a wrongful death lawsuit.

Santa Clara County police are especially being scrutinized in the Pott case in light of their failure to file charges in another sexual assault against an intoxicated teenage girl in San Jose in 2007. Several members of the De Anza College baseball team were accused of gang rape, but the district attorney claimed the heavy drinking at the party would make the charges difficult to prove. Defense attorneys asserted the 17-year-old girl led the boys into a room and demanded group sex. However, three female soccer players said they rescued the girl from the attack and brought her to the hospital. All ten defendants were either dropped from the case, settled out of court, or found not liable.

The revelation of Audrie Pott’s possible assault came on the heels of public outrage over the suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons after she was gang-raped by four boys who disseminated of photos of her assault. Parsons’ school was aware of the incident but chose not to look into it. The recent string of stories of high school girls who were assaulted and mocked for it by their peers suggests Pott’s parents will unearth many more community failures behind their daughter’s suicide.

A panel of federal judges in California lambasted Gov. Jerry Brown (D) on Thursday, for attempting to end judicial oversight of inmate health care and refusing to reduce dangerous overcrowding in state prisons. The panel found his lack of action was unconstitutional and presented a public health risk — and could lead to Brown being found in contempt of court.

Under the ruling — which the Brown Administration will appeal — California will have to submit a plan outlining how it proposes to reach safe inmate population levels within 21 days. The decision expands on another judge’s ruling last week that court oversight of California prison health care should not end considering the state’s inability to provide inmates with appropriate mental health care due to overcrowding.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled less than two years ago that California was failing to meet constitutional standards prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment due to rampant prison overcrowding and the resulting inadequate medical services. Brown and other California officials have argued that their efforts to address the issue have been sufficient, and that they should no longer be forced by courts to meet the population standards since the problem has basically been solved:

Deborah Hoffman, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, criticized the judges’ decision in a prepared statement.

“The truth of the matter is that California has invested more than a billion dollars to transform its prison health care system into one of the best in the country,” her statement said. “Our prisons now provide timely and effective health care to inmates that far exceeds what the Constitution requires.”

Currently, the prisons hold 119,542 inmates, or 149.5% of the number they were designed to hold, according to a report released this week by the corrections department.

The jurists…have ordered the state to reduce crowding to 137.5% of capacity. About 9,500 inmates would have to be removed to meet that goal.

Contrary to Hoffman’s and the Brown Administration’s rosy views on the state of California’s prison health system, the Golden State has a horrible record of providing sufficient services to prisoners. That’s particularly significant for the medically vulnerable prison population, which is comprised of a disproportionate number of minorities and low-income Americans — 37 percent of whom have chronic diseases, 65 to 80 percent of whom have struggled with substance abuse, and 13 percent of whom suffer from severe mental illness. With state cuts to mental health funding and California’s bursting prison population, prisons have also turned into de facto asylums, perpetuating cycles of mental illness and poverty in minority populations while enshrining stigma against ex-convicts and mental patients.