SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California state lawmakers this 12 months 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 top schoolers.
As states more and more fracture alongside partisan traces, California Democrats are stamping their supermajority on laws that they’ll think about till they adjourn on the finish of August. However the price of these proposals shall be a significant factor given the enormity of the state’s deficit, at the moment 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 identical invoice failed in 2022. The value tag could be monumental, although proponents say there would even be associated financial savings. The excessive potential price left Meeting Speaker Robert Rivas and others skeptical it may develop into legislation whereas the state faces a deficit.
AB 4 would require Lined 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 capable of get hold of protection due to their immigration standing, to the extent it will possibly underneath federal legislation. That would finally result in sponsored insurance coverage premiums much like these provided in Colorado and Washington.
Medical Debt
Well being care suppliers and assortment businesses could be barred from sharing sufferers’ medical debt with credit score reporting businesses underneath SB 1061. The invoice would additionally prohibit credit score reporting businesses from accepting, storing, or sharing any such info with out shopper consent. Final 12 months, the Biden administration introduced plans to develop federal guidelines barring unpaid medical payments from affecting sufferers’ credit score scores. California could be the third state to take away medical payments from shopper credit score reviews.
Medi-Cal
The Medi-Cal program, which supplies well being look after low-income individuals, could 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 benefit from satisfactory meals and diet to fight largely preventable power well being situations, and it’s certainly 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 for the reason that state resumed annual eligibility checks that have been halted throughout the covid-19 pandemic. AB 2956 would have the state search federal approval to sluggish these disenrollments by taking steps akin to letting individuals 19 and older maintain their protection mechanically for 12 months.
Violence Prevention
A rise in assaults on well being employees is prompting lawmakers to think about boosting legal penalties. In California, easy assault in opposition to employees 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 employees within the area, akin to an EMT responding to a 911 name, carries most penalties of a $2,000 high-quality and a 12 months in jail. AB 977 would set the identical most penalties for assaulting emergency well being care employees on the job, whether or not they’re within the area or an ER.
California may toughen penalties for interfering with reproductive well being care companies. Posting private info or pictures of a affected person or supplier could be a felony if certainly one of them is injured because of this. AB 2099 additionally boosts penalties for intimidation or obstruction.
Underneath SB 53, gun homeowners must lock up their weapons in state-approved safes or lockboxes the place they’d be inaccessible to anybody however the proprietor or one other lawfully licensed consumer. Democratic Sen. Anthony Portantino, the invoice’s writer, says that will make it harder for anybody, together with youngsters, to use weapons to hurt themselves or others or use the weapons to commit crimes. Critics say it could make it more durable to entry the weapon when it’s wanted, akin to to counter a house invasion. Relatedly, AB 2621 and AB 2917 handle 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 businesses, wastewater therapy services, and others to pilot wastewater testing for traces of harmful medicine in an effort to pinpoint drug scorching spots and establish new medicine. AB 1976 would require office first-aid kits to incorporate naloxone nasal spray, which can reverse opioid overdoses. And senators have proposed not less than 9 payments geared toward curbing overdose deaths, significantly from the lethal artificial opioid fentanyl.
Youth Welfare
Underneath AB 2229, backed by a “Know Your Interval” marketing campaign, faculty districts’ intercourse schooling curricula must embrace menstrual well being. There was no registered opposition.
Public faculties must make free condoms obtainable to all pupils in grades 9 to 12 underneath SB 954, which might assist forestall undesirable pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, in line with the writer, Democratic Sen. Caroline Menjivar. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed an identical invoice final 12 months.
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 Companies to put up info on using restraints and seclusion rooms on a public dashboard.
California would broaden its regulation of hemp merchandise, which have develop into more and more standard amongst youths as a approach to bypass the state’s adults-only restrictions on authorized hashish. AB 2223 would construct on a 2021 legislation that Meeting member Cecilia Aguiar-Curry mentioned in hindsight didn’t go far sufficient.
Public faculties would, underneath AB 2316, usually be barred from offering meals containing crimson dye 40, titanium dioxide, and different doubtlessly dangerous substances, that are at the moment utilized in merchandise together with Froot Loops and Flamin’ Sizzling Cheetos. It’s Democratic Meeting member Jesse Gabriel’s follow-up to his laws final 12 months 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 referred to as “endlessly chemical substances.” PFAS, brief for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, have been linked to critical well being issues. Newsom vetoed a earlier try.
Public grade faculties and group schools would, underneath AB 2901, have to offer 14 weeks of paid go away for pregnancies, miscarriages, childbirth, termination of pregnancies, or restoration. Newsom vetoed an identical invoice in 2019.
AB 2319 would enhance enforcement of a 2019 legislation geared toward lowering the disproportionate fee of maternal mortality amongst Black ladies and different pregnant ladies of shade.
Social Media
Social media corporations may face substantial penalties in the event that they don’t do sufficient to guard youngsters, underneath AB 3172. The measure would permit monetary damages of as much as $1 million for every baby underneath age 18 who proves in court docket they have been harmed, or 3 times the quantity of the kid’s precise damages. The business opposes the invoice, calling it dangerous censorship.
Cyberbullies may face civil liabilities as much as $75,000 underneath SB 1504, and people damages might be sought by anybody. Underneath present legislation, damages are capped at $7,500 and could also be pursued solely by the state legal professional normal.
Wellness
Bosses might be fined for repeatedly contacting workers after working hours underneath AB 2751, a “proper to disconnect” invoice patterned after comparable restrictions in 13 international locations. The invoice’s writer, Democratic Meeting member Matt Haney, mentioned regardless of the appearance of smartphones that “have blurred the boundaries between work and residential life,” workers 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 12 months within the chamber main a first-in-the-nation Choose Committee on Happiness and Public Coverage Outcomes. The committee isn’t planning any laws however intends to situation a report after lawmakers adjourn in August.
