Medi-Cal

Undocumented Californians are leaving health care clinics with “smiles” after they learn they’re newly eligible for Medi-Cal insurance. The health insurance expansion was decades in the making for immigrant advocates.

California is modernizing how it pays health care providers through Medi-Cal. Some mental health providers say the changes endanger their services.

The federal government suspended an annual Medicaid renewal requirement during COVID-19. Now that it has resumed, many Californians are losing coverage for “procedural reasons.”

Struggling community hospitals across California are ill-prepared for the creation of a $25 minimum wage for health care workers, should Gov. Newsom decide to sign the legislation.

About 300,000 Californians have lost Medi-Cal coverage since the state resumed eligibility checks. You have options if you get a notice about your coverage.

Medi-Cal and other programs are testing food prescriptions that advocates say could improve chronic conditions, lower health care costs and reduce hunger.

Many of the people who lost Medi-Cal are likely still eligible for health care coverage if they can get their paperwork to county offices in the next 90 days.

For Californians already living on the margins, recent numbers show that affordable housing and health care are both likely becoming even more difficult to come by. As CalMatters’ housing reporter Ben Christopher explains, inland cities such as Bakersfield, and Fresno — often less expensive places to live than coastal cities — are experiencing dramatic rent […]

California’s more than 170,000 unhoused people often lack the means and mobility to locate and visit a doctor who will accept them. At least 25 street medicine teams throughout the state are trying to fill that gap by providing health care to unhoused individuals in need.

Medi-Cal is changing how it pays mental health providers. Many of those providers say they may no longer be able to afford peer support specialists, home visits and other services.