LOS ANGELES – June 28, 2024 – This week, the legislature passed and Governor Gavin Newsom is in the process of signing a series of budget bills for the 2024-25 fiscal year that reaffirm the state’s commitment to Health4All, while addressing a historic budget deficit. The budget maintains California’s leadership in expanding health care coverage but pulls back from critically needed investments to improve Medi-Cal members’ access to care.

We applaud the Governor and legislature’s decision to preserve the expansion of Medi-Cal to all income-eligible people, including In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) for all Californians with Medi-Cal. IHSS helps ensure residents with low incomes who are elderly, blind or disabled (including children) get the support they need at home, promoting well-being and reducing the need for expensive out-of-home care. Additionally, the budget retains the optional Medi-Cal acupuncture benefit.

Yet, patients can only obtain ...

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LOS ANGELES – May 10, 2024 – Today, Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled his May Revision budget proposal for the 2024-25 fiscal year, which aims to address California’s significant budget deficit. After an early action budget package that included $17.3 billion of solutions, the Governor projects a remaining $27.6 billion budget problem. While the proposal protects most core services, it also includes cuts and reductions that will jeopardize access to care and services for millions of California’s lowest-income residents. The proposal protects, with some exceptions, the state’s historic Medi-Cal expansion to all income-eligible people but cuts critical workforce funding.

The Newsom Administration has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to ensuring all Californians can access health care through expansions of Medi-Cal eligibility. For coverage to translate into meaningful access, however, the state must invest in the providers and facilities that patients depend on.

We applaud the proposal ...

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Initiative will expand access to healthcare services and improve care for all Californians

Sacramento, CA – The Coalition to Protect Access to Care has submitted more than 800,000 signatures to county registrars throughout California to qualify the Protect Access to Healthcare Initiative for the November 2024 ballot.

The initiative leverages existing federal funding to expand access to care for patients across California. It will protect the historic investment made by a bipartisan group of state leaders to provide stability for patients and healthcare providers.

California’s healthcare system is in crisis. In rural and urban communities alike, hospitals are closing, doctors offices are having to shut their doors, and community health centers and emergency departments are struggling to meet the needs of communities across our state. Without raising existing taxes, this measure – which has broad, bipartisan support –  will ensure our ...

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By Zev Yaroslavsky and Louise McCarthy

Government is often criticized for its failures, but once in a while government has a profound success story. In January, California took the final step in expanding our Medi-Cal program to all income eligible residents. As a result, Los Angeles County has sunset its public uninsured program, My Health LA, as its enrollees move to Medi-Cal. Thanks to decades-long efforts to stabilize and strengthen a once-crumbling safety net system, the Medi-Cal expansion offers Angelenos more than just a coverage card. It offers access to quality health care. As we celebrate this expansion of coverage it is important to recognize the investments that laid the foundation for this to happen.

Thirty years ago, our health system was on the edge of collapse and the county was on the brink of bankruptcy. In addition to the ...

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LOS ANGELES – January 11, 2024 – Yesterday Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled his 2024-25 state budget proposal, which aims to address California’s budget deficit. The Governor’s budget estimates a $37.9 billion budget shortfall, substantially lower than the $68 billion gap projected by the Legislative Analyst’s Office in December. The proposal protects investments in Medi-Cal and the state’s historic expansion of the program on January 1, but delays critical health care workforce funding. 

Gov. Newsom intends to close the budget shortfall by withdrawing dollars from the state’s rainy-day fund and enacting various spending reductions and delays. The Governor also proposes seeking federal approval for an amendment to generate an additional $1.5 billion from the state’s Managed Care Organization Provider Tax (MCO Tax), a tax on health insurance plans that generates federal matching funds for the state, compared to the approved MCO Tax ...

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LOS ANGELES – July 12, 2023 – A bill to implement a $25 healthcare worker minimum wage sounds like a great solution for California’s healthcare workforce crisis, but without funding for community health centers, the patients who can least afford it will pay. CCALAC’s Louise McCarthy, El Proyecto del Barrio, Inc.’s Corinne Sánchez, and Valley Community Healthcare’s Paula Wilson share how SB 525 will worsen the crisis for health centers in an op-ed published in Los Angeles Daily News.

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LOS ANGELES – July 11, 2023 – Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a series of budget bills for the 2023-24 fiscal year that demonstrate the state’s commitment to preserve and improve the health and well-being of all Californians. The budget avoids cuts to Medi-Cal and critical health care programs and maintains California’s leadership in expanding health care coverage and access. CCALAC commends the Governor for advancing a Managed Care Organization (MCO) Tax plan that will generate billions in revenue to strengthen Medi-Cal.  

The plan includes $75 million annually to support graduate medical education and, starting in 2025, $2.7 billion annually to improve access in Medi-Cal. For the Governor’s 2024-2025 budget, the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) will propose rate increases and investments in other services, supports and health care workforce.    

In January 2024, DHCS will increase provider rates to ...

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LOS ANGELES – May 12, 2023 – Today, Governor Gavin Newsom released his revised May budget proposal for the 2023-24 fiscal year. We commend the Governor for a proposal that maintains California’s leadership in expanding health care coverage and avoids major cuts to critical programs in the face of a projected $31.5 billion deficit, $9.3 billion more than the shortfall projected in January.

We are pleased to see that the budget maintains the expansion of Medi-Cal to all income-eligible adults ages 26-49 on January 1, 2024. Medi-Cal is projected to cover approximately 15.3 million Californians in 2022-23 and 14.2 million in 2023-24—more than one-third of the state’s population.

The budget also maintains billions in investments in programs essential to improving the health and well-being of communities, including behavioral health and homelessness programs, support for Los Angeles County’s implementation of the Care Act ...

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The funding helps recoup, but does not completely make up for, lost resources; health centers call for meaningful Medi-Cal funding reform

LOS ANGELES – March 30, 2023 – After over a year of delays, this month California’s community health centers finally began receiving funds from the State’s Supplemental Payment Pool (SPP), a fund developed to partially offset losses resulting from the transition to Governor Gavin Newsom’s Medi-Cal Rx program. In the year ahead we urge the state to meaningfully address Medi-Cal funding to ensure a more sustainable and comprehensive system of care for more than 1 in 3 Californians.

In January 2019 the governor proposed Medi-Cal Rx, the transition of the Medi-Cal pharmacy benefit out of managed care to the fee-for-service delivery system. The transition, which took effect in January 2022, caused health centers to lose an estimated $150-200 million ...

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Residency Program Prepares Family Nurse Practitioners for Service in Under-resourced Communities

LOS ANGELES—JAN. 26, 2023—After the success of its first cohort, the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County (CCALAC), in partnership with the Chin Family Institute for Nursing (CFIN) at California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA), has launched the second cohort of the Family Nurse Practitioner Community Care Residency Program. Through the program, three newly licensed family nurse practitioners (FNPs) are receiving post-graduate training while providing much-needed services at community health centers in Los Angeles.

As California continues to grapple with a health care workforce crisis, including a shortage of primary care providers, FNPs can help close the gap. FNPs provide high quality, community-based ...

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