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.
This blog post focuses on one policy idea currently being considered by state policymakers to address rising health care costs – creating an Office of Health Care Affordability.
The American Rescue Plan substantially increases premium subsidies for coverage purchased through health insurance exchanges like Covered California. We project that these subsidies will help over 1.6 million Californians, including 151,000 individual market enrollees who will qualify for subsidies for the first time and 135,000 uninsured people who will become insured.
Even after the American Rescue Plan (ARP) substantially increases premium subsidies for health insurance coverage purchased through Covered California, large inequities remain in who has access to affordable coverage. Nearly 3.2 million Californians will remain uninsured in 2022, or about 9.5% of the population age 0-64, according to our projections. The highest uninsured rates will be among undocumented Californians (65%) and those eligible only for insurance through Covered California (28%).
Under the Affordable Care Act, eligibility for income-based Medicaid and subsidized health insurance through the Marketplaces is calculated using a household’s Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI). The Affordable Care Act definition of MAGI under the Internal Revenue Code and federal Medicaid regulations is shown below.
Testimony from Assembly hearing on California’s current health care system.
April 13, 2021
American Rescue Plan Improvements to Covered California Affordability: Who Gains?
April 13, 2021
Undocumented Californians Projected to Remain the Largest Group of Uninsured in the State in 2022
October 30, 2020
VIDEO: California Assembly Committee on Health Care Affordability: How to Control Costs in California
August 12, 2020
Economic and Health Benefits of a PPE Stockpile
Nearly two-thirds of undocumented immigrants in California who are younger than 65 lack health insurance, compared with less than 10 percent of all Californians in that age range, according to a recent analysis from the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
About 3.2 million Californians are uninsured this year, representing 9.5 percent of the population, according to a study by scholars at the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center. Nearly two-thirds of the state’s undocumented residents, or about 1.3 million people under the age of 65, are uninsured, the report found.
Currently, undocumented Californians make up the largest group of the uninsured population, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Nearly 1.3 million under the age of 65 were projected to be uninsured.
Currently, undocumented residents are the largest single group of Californians who are left behind when it comes to health care access, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.
According to UC Berkeley’s Labor Center, undocumented residents are excluded from Affordable Care Act subsidies and Medicaid eligibility, while noncitizens without a green card are more likely to not have employment-based health coverage – on which roughly half the country relies – than US citizens because of the greater likelihood of their employment in jobs that do not provide health plans.
Laurel Lucia
Director, Health Care Program
Ken Jacobs
Labor Center Chair
Miranda Dietz
Research and Policy Associate
Tynan Challenor
Research and Policy Assistant
|
|
