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 top schoolers.
As states more and more fracture alongside partisan strains, California Democrats are stamping their supermajority on laws that they are going to contemplate till they adjourn on the finish of August. However the price of these proposals will probably be a significant component given the enormity of the state’s deficit, presently 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 huge, although proponents say there would even be associated financial savings. The excessive potential price left Meeting Speaker Robert Rivas and others skeptical it may turn out to be legislation whereas the state faces a deficit.
AB 4 would require Coated California, the state’s medical insurance alternate, to supply medical 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 just like these provided in Colorado and Washington.
Medical Debt
Well being care suppliers and assortment companies could 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 data with out client consent. Final yr, 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 client credit score studies.
Medi-Cal
The Medi-Cal program, which gives 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 colour may gain advantage from sufficient meals and diet to fight largely preventable persistent well being situations, and it’s one in every 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 had been halted through the covid-19 pandemic. AB 2956 would have the state search federal approval to gradual these disenrollments by taking steps comparable to letting individuals 19 and older preserve their protection routinely for 12 months.
Violence Prevention
A rise in assaults on well being staff is prompting lawmakers to contemplate boosting legal penalties. In California, easy assault towards staff inside an ER is taken into account the identical as easy assault towards nearly anybody else, and carries a most punishment of a $1,000 high quality and 6 months in jail. In distinction, easy assault towards emergency medical staff within the area, comparable to 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 area or an ER.
California may toughen penalties for interfering with reproductive well being care companies. Posting private data or images of a affected person or supplier could be a felony if one in every of them is injured because of this. AB 2099 additionally boosts penalties for intimidation or obstruction.
Beneath 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 person. Democratic Sen. Anthony Portantino, the invoice’s writer, says that may make it harder for anybody, together with kids, to use weapons to hurt 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, comparable to 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 remedy amenities, and others to pilot wastewater testing for traces of harmful medicine in an effort to pinpoint drug sizzling 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 not less than 9 payments geared toward curbing overdose deaths, significantly from the lethal artificial opioid fentanyl.
Youth Welfare
Beneath AB 2229, backed by a “Know Your Interval” marketing campaign, college districts’ intercourse training curricula must embrace 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, based on the writer, Democratic Sen. Caroline Menjivar. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed an identical invoice final yr.
Actuality present star Paris Hilton is backing a bipartisan invoice to require extra reporting on the remedy of youth in state-licensed short-term residential therapeutic applications. SB 1043 would require the state Division of Social Providers to put up data on the usage of restraints and seclusion rooms on a public dashboard.
California would broaden its regulation of hemp merchandise, which have turn out to be 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 stated 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 presently 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 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 referred to as “without end chemical compounds.” PFAS, brief for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, have been linked to severe 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 decreasing the disproportionate charge of maternal mortality amongst Black ladies and different pregnant ladies 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 enable monetary damages of as much as $1 million for every youngster underneath age 18 who proves in courtroom they had been harmed, or 3 times the quantity of the kid’s precise damages. The trade 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. Beneath present legislation, damages are capped at $7,500 and could also be pursued solely by the state lawyer basic.
Wellness
Bosses might 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 writer, Democratic Meeting member Matt Haney, stated 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 Choose Committee on Happiness and Public Coverage Outcomes. The committee isn’t planning any laws however intends to problem a report after lawmakers adjourn in August.