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 prime schoolers.
As states more and more fracture alongside partisan traces, California Democrats are stamping their supermajority on laws that they’ll take into account 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 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 may change into legislation whereas the state faces a deficit.
AB 4 would require Lined California, the state’s medical insurance change, to supply medical insurance insurance policies to people who find themselves in any other case not in a position to get hold of protection due to their immigration standing, to the extent it could beneath federal legislation. That would finally result in backed insurance coverage premiums just like these supplied in Colorado and Washington.
Medical Debt
Well being care suppliers and assortment businesses can be barred from sharing sufferers’ medical debt with credit score reporting businesses beneath SB 1061. The invoice would additionally prohibit credit score reporting businesses from accepting, storing, or sharing any such info with out shopper consent. Final yr, the Biden administration introduced 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 shopper credit score stories.
Medi-Cal
The Medi-Cal program, which supplies well being take care of low-income folks, can be required to cowl medically supportive meals and vitamin beginning July 1, 2026, beneath AB 1975. The invoice builds on an present however restricted pilot program. The laws says Californians of shade may benefit from ample meals and vitamin to fight largely preventable power well being circumstances, and it’s one in all 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 gradual these disenrollments by taking steps resembling letting folks 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 prison penalties. In California, easy assault towards employees inside an ER is taken into account the identical as easy assault towards virtually 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 employees within the area, resembling 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 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 can be a felony if one in all them is injured in consequence. 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 might be inaccessible to anybody however the proprietor or one other lawfully licensed person. Democratic Sen. Anthony Portantino, the invoice’s creator, says that will make it more durable for anybody, together with kids, to make use of 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, resembling 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 companion with native public well being businesses, wastewater remedy 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 may reverse opioid overdoses. And senators have proposed not less than 9 payments aimed toward curbing overdose deaths, significantly from the lethal artificial opioid fentanyl.
Youth Welfare
Beneath AB 2229, backed by a “Know Your Interval” marketing campaign, faculty 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 beneath SB 954, which might assist stop undesirable pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, in accordance with the creator, 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 Companies to submit info on using restraints and seclusion rooms on a public dashboard.
California would broaden its regulation of hemp merchandise, which have change into more and more standard amongst youths as a solution 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, beneath AB 2316, usually be barred from offering meals containing crimson dye 40, titanium dioxide, and different probably 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 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, often known as “without end chemical compounds.” PFAS, quick for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, have been linked to critical well being issues. Newsom vetoed a earlier try.
Public grade faculties and neighborhood schools would, beneath AB 2901, have to supply 14 weeks of paid depart 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 aimed toward lowering the disproportionate price of maternal mortality amongst Black girls and different pregnant girls of shade.
Social Media
Social media corporations may face substantial penalties in the event that they don’t do sufficient to guard kids, beneath AB 3172. The measure would permit monetary damages of as much as $1 million for every baby beneath age 18 who proves in courtroom they have been harmed, or thrice 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 beneath SB 1504, and people damages may very well be sought by anybody. Beneath present legislation, damages are capped at $7,500 and could also be pursued solely by the state lawyer normal.
Wellness
Bosses may very well be fined for repeatedly contacting staff after working hours beneath AB 2751, a “proper to disconnect” invoice patterned after related restrictions in 13 nations. The invoice’s creator, Democratic Meeting member Matt Haney, mentioned regardless of the arrival 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 situation a report after lawmakers adjourn in August.