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.

Republicans are considering major cuts to Medicaid to offset tax cuts. Depending on the specific mechanisms and timing for cutting Medicaid, California could expect to see between $10 billion and $20 billion fewer federal dollars per year coming to Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. These federal cuts would lead to significant job loss in health care and other sectors.

The onerous documentation needed with Medi-Cal work requirements would increase administrative costs and reduce enrollment and access to care, including for people who are already working or otherwise should be exempt.

This page provides the number and percentage of children and teens enrolled in Medi-Cal by county, congressional district, assembly district, and senate district, as of July 2024. These estimates reflect the district boundaries after the 2024 election

This page provides estimates of the number of individuals and percentage of population enrolled in Medi-Cal by county, congressional district, assembly district, and senate district, as of June 2024.

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) included additional federal subsidies to make health insurance more affordable in the individual market, but these expire at the end of 2025. If Congress does not extend the expanded subsidies and levels revert to those in the original Affordable Care Act, all 2.37 million Californians in the individual market—including those not receiving subsidies—would face higher health insurance premiums and be forced to choose between more expensive coverage, less generous coverage, or forgoing coverage all together and going uninsured.

These comments were submitted to the California Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) in advance of the Board’s meeting in Monterey County on August 28, 2024. The comments describe the data and research showing that Monterey County has among the highest hospital prices in the state and country.

Blog post exploring the factors surrounding a proposal to expand Covered California to undocumented Californians by creating a “mirror marketplace.” This would give undocumented Californians, who are prevented by federal law from participating in Covered California, the ability to shop, compare, and enroll in health plans.

Comments submitted to the California Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) in response to the proposal of a 3.0% statewide health care spending growth target for 2025 to 2029.

This brief analyzes the impact SB 525 is projected to have on workers, patients, and the state budget in the first year of the policy. It is an update of our June 2023 and April 2023 briefs, both of which analyzed preliminary versions of the bill.

Data and methods appendix to the brief “California health care minimum wage: New estimates for impacts on workers, patients, and the state budget.”

Consumer health care affordability has deteriorated over the past two decades in California due to rising premiums along with increasingly common and increasingly large deductibles for job-based coverage. This report documents these trends and their implications for Californian’s health and financial well-being, and recommends how California’s new Office of Health Care Affordability can monitor consumer affordability metrics in order to ensure that consumers benefit from the office’s efforts to control growth in per capita health care spending.

Monterey County has some of the highest hospital costs in the state, and working families are struggling to pay their health care bills. To better understand why health care costs are so high in this Central Coast county, there is an urgent need to collect and analyze data that can help point to causes and solutions to the problem.

The California Office of Health Care Affordability (OHCA) will establish statewide and sectoral health care spending targets with the goal of achieving a more sustainable per capita rate of spending growth on health care provided by a range of health care entities. This policy brief will discuss the various economic indicators that can be used in setting the statewide target.

In this brief we estimate the new costs to the state resulting from SB 525 as well as the savings it would generate through reductions in safety net program enrollment of affected workers and their family members.

In April, the Biden Administration announced a proposed rule that would allow an estimated 40,000 uninsured DACA recipients in California access to subsidized health coverage through Covered California. This fills an important gap in health coverage options, but it renders access to Covered California contingent on DACA status—which itself is at risk of being overturned by the courts.

This report shows that the proposed California Senate Bill No. 525 (SB 525), which would establish a new $25 per hour minimum wage for health care employees, has the potential to substantially improve conditions for low-wage health care workers that provide essential services to the state, ameliorate staffing shortages in the industry, and improve quality of care.