SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California state lawmakers this yr are persevering with their progressive tilt on well being coverage with dozens of proposals together with a ban on a Froot Loops ingredient and free condoms for prime schoolers.
As states more and more fracture alongside partisan strains, California Democrats are stamping their supermajority on laws that they’ll contemplate till they adjourn on the finish of August. However the price of these proposals might be a significant component given the enormity of the state’s deficit, at present estimated at between $38 billion and $73 billion.
Well being Protection
Lawmakers are once more contemplating whether or not to create a government-run, single-payer well being care system for all Californians. AB 2200 is Democratic Meeting member Ash Kalra’s second such try, after an analogous invoice failed in 2022. The value tag can be huge, although proponents say there would even be associated financial savings. The excessive potential price left Meeting Speaker Robert Rivas and others skeptical it could become law whereas the state faces a deficit.
AB 4 would require Covered California, the state’s medical health insurance alternate, to supply medical health insurance insurance policies to people who find themselves in any other case not in a position to get hold of protection due to their immigration standing, to the extent it might underneath federal regulation. That would ultimately result in subsidized insurance premiums much like these offered in Colorado and Washington.
Medical Debt
Well being care suppliers and assortment companies can be barred from sharing sufferers’ medical debt with credit score reporting companies underneath SB 1061. The invoice would additionally prohibit credit score reporting companies from accepting, storing, or sharing any such info with out client consent. Final yr, the Biden administration announced plans to develop federal guidelines barring unpaid medical payments from affecting sufferers’ credit score scores. California can be the third state to take away medical payments from client credit score experiences.
Medi-Cal
The Medi-Cal program, which supplies well being take care of low-income folks, can be required to cowl medically supportive meals and diet beginning July 1, 2026, underneath AB 1975. The invoice builds on an present however restricted pilot program. The laws says Californians of shade may gain advantage from ample meals and diet to fight largely preventable continual well being situations, and it’s one of 14 measures sought by the California Legislative Black Caucus as a part of reparations for racial injustice.
Greater than 1.6 million California residents, disproportionately Latinos, have been kicked off Medi-Cal because the state resumed annual eligibility checks that have been halted through the covid-19 pandemic. AB 2956 would have the state search federal approval to gradual these disenrollments by taking steps resembling letting folks 19 and older hold their protection routinely for 12 months.
Violence Prevention
A rise in assaults on well being staff is prompting lawmakers to contemplate boosting criminal penalties. In California, easy assault in opposition to staff inside an ER is taken into account the identical as easy assault in opposition to virtually anybody else, and carries a most punishment of a $1,000 high quality and 6 months in jail. In distinction, easy assault in opposition to emergency medical staff within the subject, resembling an EMT responding to a 911 name, carries most penalties of a $2,000 high quality and a yr in jail. AB 977 would set the identical most penalties for assaulting emergency well being care staff on the job, whether or not they’re within the subject or an ER.
California might toughen penalties for interfering with reproductive well being care providers. Posting private info or pictures of a affected person or supplier can be a felony if one among them is injured in consequence. AB 2099 additionally boosts penalties for intimidation or obstruction.
Below SB 53, gun house owners must lock up their weapons in state-approved safes or lockboxes the place they might be inaccessible to anybody however the proprietor or one other lawfully approved person. Democratic Sen. Anthony Portantino, the invoice’s creator, says that might make it harder for anybody, together with kids, to use guns to harm themselves or others or use the weapons to commit crimes. Critics say it might make it tougher to entry the weapon when it’s wanted, resembling to counter a house invasion. Relatedly, AB 2621 and AB 2917 deal with gun violence restraining orders.
Substance Use
The spike in drug overdoses has prompted a number of responses: AB 3073 would require the state’s public well being division to accomplice with native public well being companies, wastewater therapy services, and others to pilot wastewater testing for traces of harmful medication in an effort to pinpoint drug scorching spots and establish new medication. AB 1976 would require office first-aid kits to incorporate naloxone nasal spray, which can reverse opioid overdoses. And senators have proposed at least nine bills geared toward curbing overdose deaths, significantly from the lethal artificial opioid fentanyl.
Youth Welfare
Below AB 2229, backed by a “Know Your Period” marketing campaign, faculty districts’ intercourse training curricula must embody menstrual well being. There was no registered opposition.
Public faculties must make free condoms accessible to all pupils in grades 9 to 12 underneath SB 954, which might assist stop undesirable pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, in keeping with the creator, Democratic Sen. Caroline Menjivar. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar bill final yr.
Actuality present star Paris Hilton is backing a bipartisan invoice to require extra reporting on the therapy of youth in state-licensed short-term residential therapeutic packages. SB 1043 would require the state Division of Social Providers to put up info on the usage of restraints and seclusion rooms on a public dashboard.
California would develop its regulation of hemp merchandise, which have turn into more and more well-liked amongst youths as a option to bypass the state’s adults-only restrictions on authorized hashish. AB 2223 would construct on a 2021 law that Meeting member Cecilia Aguiar-Curry mentioned in hindsight didn’t go far enough.
Public faculties would, underneath AB 2316, typically be barred from offering meals containing purple dye 40, titanium dioxide, and different probably dangerous substances, that are at present utilized in merchandise together with Froot Loops and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. It’s Democratic Meeting member Jesse Gabriel’s follow-up to his laws final yr that tried to ban a chemical utilized in Skittles.
Girls’s Well being
AB 2515 would ban the sale of menstrual merchandise with deliberately added PFAS, also called “forever chemicals.” PFAS, quick for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, have been linked to severe well being issues. Newsom vetoed a previous attempt.
Public grade faculties and neighborhood faculties would, underneath AB 2901, have to offer 14 weeks of paid go away for pregnancies, miscarriages, childbirth, termination of pregnancies, or restoration. Newsom vetoed a similar bill in 2019.
AB 2319 would improve enforcement of a 2019 regulation geared toward lowering the disproportionate charge of maternal mortality among Black women and different pregnant ladies of shade.
Social Media
Social media firms might face substantial penalties in the event that they don’t do sufficient to guard kids, underneath AB 3172. The measure would enable monetary damages of as much as $1 million for every youngster underneath age 18 who proves in courtroom they have been harmed, or 3 times the quantity of the kid’s precise damages. The trade opposes the invoice, calling it harmful censorship.
Cyberbullies might face civil liabilities as much as $75,000 underneath SB 1504, and people damages could possibly be sought by anybody. Below present regulation, damages are capped at $7,500 and could also be pursued solely by the state legal professional basic.
Wellness
Bosses could possibly be fined for repeatedly contacting staff after working hours underneath AB 2751, a “proper to disconnect” invoice patterned after comparable restrictions in 13 nations. The invoice’s creator, Democratic Meeting member Matt Haney, mentioned regardless of the appearance of smartphones that “have blurred the boundaries between work and residential life,” staff shouldn’t be anticipated to work across the clock. The measure is opposed by the California Chamber of Commerce.
Lastly, Democrat Anthony Rendon, a long-serving state Meeting speaker, is spending his final yr within the chamber main a first-in-the-nation Select Committee on Happiness and Public Coverage Outcomes. The committee isn’t planning any laws however intends to issue a report after lawmakers adjourn in August.
