Protect Medi-Cal Funding Series, Medi-Cal Affordability

Executive Summary

California’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, promotes ensuring low-income residents and those mired in poverty are able to access quality health care. For example, California, has strong protections to restrict premiums and other cost barriers to health care for the state’s most vulnerable populations. In the fifth Issue Brief of a 12-part “Protect Medi-Cal Funding,” series, NHeLP Senior Attorney Abigail Coursolle explains how federal cuts to Medicaid funding, proposed in the House Republicans’ so-called American Health Care Act (AHCA), would likely prompt the state to weaken its laws that ensure low-income residents and families are able to afford health care coverage. Radical cuts in federal Medicaid funding, for instance, could cause the state “to add increased premiums, copayments, or other forms of cost-sharing to Medi-Cal to save money.”