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.

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.

This blog post outlines the assistance offered by the recently-established Child Care Providers United California Workers Health Care Fund, summarizes recent findings from a David Binder Research/ California Health Care Foundation survey that underscore the need for this new health care investment for family child care providers, and discusses how the program will improve affordability for providers and benefit California as a whole.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) currently being considered by Congress would improve health care affordability for many Californians by addressing high and rising drug prices and by extending the improved premium affordability assistance to Covered California enrollees that began in 2021. The extension of federal premium assistance would also unlock additional state-financed affordability help to reduce how much Covered California enrollees pay out-of-pocket when they access care.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress enacted the American Rescue Plan of 2021 to provide additional temporary financial help for buying health insurance through the ACA Marketplaces. If these enhanced subsidies are not extended for 2023 and beyond, we project 220,000 fewer Californians would have individual market insurance in 2023 than if enhanced subsidies are extended, and premiums would be less affordable for more than two million individual market enrollees.

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.

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%).

Testimony from Assembly hearing on California’s current health care system.

This is the eighth post in the Labor Center’s blog series “Rising Health Care Costs in California: A Worker Issue.”

This is the seventh post in the Labor Center’s blog series “Rising Health Care Costs in California: A Worker Issue.”

This is the sixth post in the Labor Center’s blog series “Rising Health Care Costs in California: A Worker Issue.” In our last post, we explored the challenges associated with…

This is the fifth post in the Labor Center’s blog series “Rising Health Care Costs in California: A Worker Issue.” As described in the last blog post, premiums for job-based…

This is the fourth post in the Labor Center’s blog series “Rising Health Care Costs in California: A Worker Issue.” Over the last ten years, the cost of job-based health…

This is the third post in the Labor Center’s blog series “Rising Health Care Costs in California: A Worker Issue.” Job-based coverage remains the most common form of health coverage…

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 is the second post in the Labor Center’s blog series “Rising Health Care Costs in California: A Worker Issue.” While our blog series will primarily focus on Californians with…

This is the first post in the Labor Center’s blog series “Rising Health Care Costs in California: A Worker Issue.” California workers with job-based health coverage are feeling the pain…