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 prime schoolers.
As states more and more fracture alongside partisan traces, California Democrats are stamping their supermajority on laws that they may think about till they adjourn on the finish of August. However the price of these proposals might be a significant factor 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 identical invoice failed in 2022. The value tag can be huge, although proponents say there would even be associated financial savings. The excessive potential value 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 trade, to supply medical health insurance insurance policies to people who find themselves in any other case not in a position to acquire protection due to their immigration standing, to the extent it may well underneath federal legislation. That might finally 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 12 months, 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 studies.
Medi-Cal
The Medi-Cal program, which gives well being look after low-income individuals, can be required to cowl medically supportive meals and vitamin beginning July 1, 2026, underneath AB 1975. The invoice builds on an current however restricted pilot program. The laws says Californians of colour may benefit from ample meals and vitamin to fight largely preventable persistent well being circumstances, 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 for the reason that state resumed annual eligibility checks that had been halted in the course of the covid-19 pandemic. AB 2956 would have the state search federal approval to sluggish these disenrollments by taking steps corresponding to letting individuals 19 and older preserve their protection routinely for 12 months.
Violence Prevention
A rise in assaults on well being employees is prompting lawmakers to think about boosting criminal penalties. In California, easy assault in opposition to employees inside an ER is taken into account the identical as easy assault in opposition to nearly anybody else, and carries a most punishment of a $1,000 fantastic and 6 months in jail. In distinction, easy assault in opposition to emergency medical employees within the discipline, corresponding to an EMT responding to a 911 name, carries most penalties of a $2,000 fantastic 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 discipline 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 can be a felony if considered one of them is injured consequently. 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 approved consumer. Democratic Sen. Anthony Portantino, the invoice’s creator, says that may make it more durable for anybody, together with kids, to use guns to harm themselves or others or use the weapons to commit crimes. Critics say it will make it more durable to entry the weapon when it’s wanted, corresponding 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 associate with native public well being companies, wastewater therapy amenities, and others to pilot wastewater testing for traces of harmful medicine in an effort to pinpoint drug scorching spots and determine new medicine. 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 aimed toward curbing overdose deaths, notably from the lethal artificial opioid fentanyl.
Youth Welfare
Underneath AB 2229, backed by a “Know Your Period” marketing campaign, faculty districts’ intercourse schooling curricula must embody menstrual well being. There was no registered opposition.
Public faculties must make free condoms out there to all pupils in grades 9 to 12 underneath SB 954, which might assist forestall undesirable pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, based on the creator, Democratic Sen. Caroline Menjivar. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar bill 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 submit info on using restraints and seclusion rooms on a public dashboard.
California would develop its regulation of hemp merchandise, which have change into more and more fashionable 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 doubtlessly 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 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 “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 depart for pregnancies, miscarriages, childbirth, termination of pregnancies, or restoration. Newsom vetoed a similar bill in 2019.
AB 2319 would improve enforcement of a 2019 legislation aimed toward decreasing the disproportionate charge of maternal mortality among Black women and different pregnant girls of colour.
Social Media
Social media firms may face substantial penalties in the event that they don’t do sufficient to guard kids, 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 had been harmed, or 3 times the quantity of the kid’s precise damages. The trade opposes the invoice, calling it harmful censorship.
Cyberbullies may face civil liabilities as much as $75,000 underneath SB 1504, and people damages may very well be sought by anybody. Underneath present legislation, damages are capped at $7,500 and could also be pursued solely by the state legal professional common.
Wellness
Bosses may very well be fined for repeatedly contacting workers after working hours underneath AB 2751, a “proper to disconnect” invoice patterned after related restrictions in 13 international locations. 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,” 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 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.
