Has legislation to stop surprise medical bills worked?
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2024
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’ve been taking a close look on this program at the burdens of medical debt. Back in 2020, Congress passed the so-called “No Surprises Act” to protect patients from unexpected big bills for out-of-network medical care — and turns out, its wider impact on health care spending has yielded mixed results. But first on the show, California’s new $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast food goes into effect today. We’ll unpack reactions.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A big day for some minimum wage workers in California and the restaurants that employ them. |
| 0:07.0 | From Marketplace, I'm Sabrie Beneshore in for David Brancaccio. |
| 0:11.0 | A lot of fast food workers in California are getting a raise today as a new |
| 0:15.5 | minimum wage kicks in for their industry. Twenty dollars an hour. It's one of the highest in the country. |
| 0:20.4 | And while workers are celebrating, some franchise owners say they may not be able to withstand the higher costs without raising prices. |
| 0:29.0 | Marketplace's Nova Safo is here with more High Nova. |
| 0:32.0 | Good morning. |
| 0:33.0 | So a big day indeed for fast food workers in California. |
| 0:36.0 | It is. |
| 0:37.0 | For those making the state's current minimum wage for all workers, which is $16 an hour, |
| 0:41.0 | this is going to be a significant pay bump. There is a bigger question of |
| 0:44.3 | course of whether even 20 bucks an hour is really a living wage in California and it's not a big |
| 0:48.8 | change for everyone's debris. In some cities minimum wages were already higher than the state's minimum. |
| 0:54.1 | For example, the city of West Hollywood has a $19 minimum wage, so different effects |
| 0:58.9 | depending on where you are in the state. |
| 1:01.2 | How do restaurant owners feel about this complicated kind of relationship there? |
| 1:05.5 | It is a complicated relationship between the restaurant owners and the rest of the California |
| 1:10.1 | lawmakers. |
| 1:11.1 | Technically, they're in favor of it. |
| 1:12.3 | The International Franchise Association |
| 1:13.9 | supported the law which created this higher minimum wage because it was a |
| 1:17.9 | compromise with the Service Employees International Union and state lawmakers. They |
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