CalSIM

In 2019, state lawmakers took steps to protect California’s coverage gains and increase affordability of coverage by instituting a state individual mandate penalty, providing additional subsidies for Covered California’s individual market enrollees, and expanding Medi-Cal to low-income undocumented young adults. California is the first state to include undocumented adults in full Medicaid benefits and the first to provide subsidies to middle-class consumers not eligible under the ACA.

This paper discusses the methodology behind the UC Berkeley UCLA California Simulation of Insurance Markets (CalSIM) micro-simulation model, version 2.

We urge you to not change the cost of living adjustment method for the OPM to Chained CPI-U, any other the other measures mentioned in the request for comment, or any other index that shows lower growth than the current CPI-U. Additionally, we urge you to include other issues apart from cost of living adjustments when considering any changes to the OPM.

While this proposal may seem simply technical in nature, the harm in California would be very real. Over time, millions of Californians would lose eligibility for benefits or receive reduced benefits, and that reduced assistance would translate to hundreds of millions of fewer federal dollars flowing into the state’s economy.

Many California policymakers have expressed a desire and commitment to resist federal sabotage of the ACA, control health care costs, and achieve universal health care coverage. As the state explores ways to fundamentally redesign our health care delivery system—including by adopting a single payer or other unified public financing approach—state policymakers are also considering near-term policies that do not require federal approval but address the immediate challenges of improving affordability and expanding coverage.

California made historic gains in health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but several million Californians remain uninsured and many struggle to afford individual market insurance.

543,000 Californians ages 0-64 were estimated to be eligible for Medi-Cal but uninsured in 2016-2017, most of whom were adults (79% were over age 18). Why are some Californians uninsured in spite of their Medi-Cal eligibility?

A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley and UCLA projects how changes to federal law that remove the Affordable Care Act (ACA) individual mandate penalty in 2019 could significantly impact California’s record-breaking health coverage gains.

We project that between 150,000 and 450,000 more Californians will be uninsured in 2020, growing to between 490,000 and 790,000 more uninsured in 2023, compared to the projected number if the ACA penalty had been maintained.

This data book provides estimates of the remaining uninsured in California in 2017 by Covered California rating region and for large counties using a preliminary version of the California Simulation of Insurance Markets (CalSIM) model v 2.0.