The Labor Center’s health care research aims to inform federal, state, and local policymaking to improve access to health coverage and make health care more affordable for workers and their families. Our research especially examines policy impacts for California low-income and immigrant working families and communities of color. Many of our publications include projections from the California Simulation of Insurance Markets (CalSIM) model, jointly developed with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
Our factsheet for calculating Modified Adjusted Gross Income under the Affordable Care Act is available here.
Who is and isn’t insured, coverage affordability, job-based health coverage, the ACA, Covered CA, and Medi-Cal.
Affordability of coverage and care, underlying cost trends, and solutions.
Access to health coverage for immigrant families, undocumented Californians, and those with DACA.
California Simulation of Insurance Markets model projections, reports, and methodology.
UC Berkeley Labor Center researchers Miranda Dietz, Laurel Lucia, Alexis Manzanilla, and Nari Rhee have analyzed the potential impacts of Medicaid cuts on California and the importance of the Medi-Cal program to our state. View their recent publications.
Rolling back Medicaid access through cuts and bureaucratic hurdles will have far-reaching and disproportionate impacts on older adults. In particular, the work documentation requirement poses an especially draconian barrier to older adults, given the steady dropoff in employment after age 50 due to deteriorating health, age discrimination, and increasing responsibility to provide care for aging family members.
This paper focuses on medical debt in California, and existing and potential policy solutions to ameliorate the ruinous financial effects of medical debt in the state.
California’s historic expansion of coverage to undocumented individuals has not only brought the state closer to universal coverage, but has also reduced racial disparities in health coverage. However, this progress is at risk due to a new state budget proposal that would curtail Medi-Cal benefits for certain immigrants, ahead of additional severe federal cuts to Medicaid being considered.
This page provides data on California health care employment by county and congressional district, including by sector and as a percentage of total employment, using estimates from IMPLAN input-output economic modeling software.
June 23, 2025
Labor Center Research on the Impacts of Federal Medicaid Cuts on California
June 23, 2025
Medicaid Cuts—Including Work Documentation Requirements—Harm Older Adults
March 25, 2025
Eight Million Medi-Cal Enrollees at Risk of Losing Health Coverage If Congress Imposes Work Requirements
June 30, 2025
How Trump’s megabill could affect Medicaid and who could lose coverage
May 7, 2025
California Health Care Employment by District and County 2023
April 24, 2025
California Could Lose Up to 217,000 Jobs if Congress Cuts Medicaid
February 3, 2025
Medi-Cal Enrollment and Spending by District and County 2024
March 11, 2025
Medi-Cal Enrollment Among Children and Teens by District and County 2024
“There is research from other health care sectors that’s shown that adequate wages are an important component of retaining health care workers,” Lucia said. “And kind of relatedly, there is research showing the importance of adequate and consistent staffing to patients having good quality of care.”
“Having health insurance improves people’s ability to gain and maintain employment. And when providers have more insured patients, they’re better able to predict their revenues and have financial stability. This benefits all of us.”–Laurel Lucia
Nearly 15 million Californians are enrolled in Medicaid, according to UC Berkeley Labor Center. In Fresno County, 54% of the population are enrolled in Medi-Cal.
Two-thirds of residents in the 22nd District are enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program — more than any other congressional district in the state, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
Rhee said it’s difficult to know what the impacts of federal Medicaid cuts will be on the in-home program. “The state has to make some difficult decisions around how they budget for that,” she said.
Miranda Dietz
Interim Director, Health Care Program
Ken Jacobs
Senior Policy Advisor
Laurel Lucia
Deputy Executive Director of Programs
Alexis Manzanilla
Policy Researcher
