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.

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.

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.

Labor Center research was used in a years-long campaign by health and immigrant advocates to bring health coverage to undocumented Californians.

The Medi-Cal redetermination process has been paused during the COVID public health emergency. As a result, many more individuals have newly enrolled in Medi-Cal than disenrolled, increasing Medi-Cal enrollment by almost 2 million since the beginning of the pandemic. This blog post summarizes (1) the available estimates of the potential reduction in Medi-Cal enrollment once the PHE is unwound and redeterminations have been completed, and (2) the likely eligibility for and enrollment in private coverage among those losing Medi-Cal.

California has the opportunity to expand Medi-Cal to all low-income Californians, regardless of immigration status or age. This policy would result in a massive increase in coverage, bringing close to 700,000 undocumented Californians into coverage and reducing the uninsured rate for residents under 65 to just 7.1%, the biggest single improvement since implementation of the ACA.

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.

The ACA covered millions of people and reduced the racial and ethnic disparities in health coverage in California; to take away these coverage options especially during a global pandemic and recession would exacerbate racial and ethnic inequality in California.

The ACA expanded coverage options available to low-income Californians and unemployed workers; to take away those options during a global pandemic and recession would compound the hardships faced by low-income households.

Overturning the ACA would reduce annual federal funding to California by $28.8 billion in 2022, the year of focus for this analysis. Many Californians’ jobs are also at stake should the ACA be overturned. California would be projected to have 269,000 fewer jobs, $29.3 billion less in state GDP, and $2.2 billion less in state and local tax revenue, compared to if the ACA remains in effect.

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…

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.