Billions of dollars have been cut from California’s public health programs because of federal budget cuts, state health officials told lawmakers on Tuesday afternoon.
California state senators and Assembly members heard from officials about the impacts of federal budget cuts on health care programs, including Medi-Cal, during a joint committee hearing at the Capitol.
“The rollback of federal policies risks reversing hard-won progress,” Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Oakland and chair of the Assembly Health Committee, said at the outset of the Sacramento hearing. “For many Californians, accessibility and affordability was already in question. More than half of Californians are worried about out-of-pocket expenses, long-term care and monthly premiums, concerns that now surpass anxiety about housing, groceries, transportation and utilities.”
During the hearing, officials from state and private health organizations told legislators that massive reductions of federal funding have been made to programs such as Medi-Cal, the Affordable Care Act and Covered California.
Those officials said threats to the state’s taxpayer-funded health programs total $900 billion in Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid. They also pointed to regulatory changes that would make less valuable health insurance plans available through Covered California and otherwise dismantle other types of federal funding that the state was previously able to count on.
The cuts infuriated some lawmakers during the hearing on Tuesday, who said health care is unaffordable for many.
“When I see some of the people who come in our offices, our elderly, our disabled, primary care doctors, we’re all very, very concerned,” Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Davis, said during the hearing. “This is not affordable. It’s not taking care of our most vulnerable. I’m just very frustrated.”
House Resolution 1, the federal government’s budget bill also known as the Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed with Congressional approval and was signed into law in July. The bill made drastic cuts to taxpayer-funded programs, including food assistance and health care, according to the California Budget & Policy Center. The center estimates that those cuts could result in 2 million Californians losing their access to health care through Medi-Cal and could cost the state between $2.3 billion and $5.1 billion a year, citing information from the California Health and Human Services Agency.
Research from the California Health Care Foundation, written by Dawn Joyce of Impact Health Policy Partners, shows that $30 billion a year is expected to be cut from Medi-Cal. Data from The California Health Care Foundation shows that the federal government paid for 62% of the Medi-Cal budget in fiscal year 2024-25 and that 22% came from the California general fund, and 16% came from other state and local sources.
Joyce’s research on health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act, which she presented on during the Tuesday hearing, shows that since ObamaCare was passed in 2010, the number of uninsured policyholders across the country fell below 20% for both the American Indian and Hispanic or Latino populations, under 15% for both Black American and Native Hawaiian people, and under 10% for white people.
“There’s just a broader effort currently to dismantle, remove federal funding that we’ve relied on, and it will lead to vast coverage losses,” Joyce testified during the hearing on Tuesday.
