California
California Health Insurance Stable in 2021, but Many Will Need to Switch Coverage Once COVID-19 Pandemic Protections End – California Health Care Foundation
Throughout 2021, the second calendar yr of the COVID-19 pandemic, California’s medical health insurance panorama remained comparatively steady. This text focuses solely on Californians underneath age 65, which is the brink for age-based Medicare protection, and the protection charges highlighted beneath embrace kids besides the place in any other case specified (i.e., “nonelderly adults”). Primarily based on the 2021 California Well being Interview Survey (CHIS), the proportion of Californians underneath age 65 with out medical health insurance, 7.4% in 2021, was not considerably completely different from the prior yr. There additionally have been no statistically vital adjustments throughout demographic teams, together with revenue, age, geography, and race and ethnicity.
Additionally, the speed of Californians with particular person market protection, 5.9% in 2021, was statistically unchanged from 2020. Whereas the speed of Californians with Medi-Cal protection (California’s Medicaid program), 26.4% in 2021, seems larger than the 24.8% of 2020, the distinction will not be statistically vital. That discovering contrasts with information from the California Division of Well being Care Providers, which reported that Medi-Cal enrollment elevated by 7.3% (893,552 enrollees) in 2021 for individuals underneath age 65, rising from 12,244,085 in December 2020 to 13,137,637 in December 2021.
There are a number of potential explanations why survey knowledge on Medi-Cal enrollment could differ from Medi-Cal’s information. Analysis reveals that surveys are likely to undercount individuals enrolled in state Medicaid applications, partly because of individuals’s confusion over program names and whether or not they’re nonetheless enrolled in Medicaid. This second problem, of individuals being unaware they’re nonetheless enrolled, could have been exacerbated through the pandemic. A short lived coverage, termed “steady protection,” prevented enrollees from being disenrolled from Medicaid through the public well being emergency, as well being protection has been important to preserving entry to well being care. This coverage could have resulted in some Californians retaining Medi-Cal protection they assumed had expired.
On the similar time, the speed of Californians with employer-sponsored insurance coverage (ESI) declined considerably, from 60.1% in 2020 to 57.8% in 2021. The losses in ESI seem to have been offset by will increase in Medi-Cal protection for some key teams. As an example, whereas ESI charges declined considerably for nonelderly adults (age 18–64), individuals with reasonable incomes (139%–400% of federal poverty degree) and Latinx individuals skilled statistically vital will increase in Medi-Cal protection charges.
Though the proportion of Californians with out medical health insurance at a given time was unchanged in 2021, the speed of Californians experiencing long-term uninsurance (for a yr or extra) rose from 4.8% in 2020 to five.7% in 2021, a statistically vital enhance.
Conclusions and Dialogue
Total, the steadiness of the state’s medical health insurance price may be seen as constructive, significantly through the upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic. Regardless of huge job losses in 2020, California’s uninsurance price declined to a historic low within the first yr of the pandemic, virtually actually because of federal and state efforts to keep up or enhance entry to medical health insurance. The power for California to carry that low price of uninsurance right into a second risky yr of the pandemic is notable.
There have been different measures, nonetheless, that point out California’s protection panorama shifted barely since 2020. As an example, the state’s price of ESI protection declined considerably in 2021, which might be regarding if it developed right into a pattern. Nonetheless, you will need to acknowledge that in 2020 the portion of Californians with ESI was a high-water mark since full implementation of the Inexpensive Care Act in 2014, so it could possibly be that the pattern of elevated ESI in recent times is just moderating.
One other doubtlessly regarding indicator was the rise in California’s price of long-term uninsurance from 2020 to 2021. However on this case, pattern knowledge present that the 2020 long-term uninsurance price of 4.8% could merely have been an outlier — presumably to because of the pandemic — with the 2021 price of 5.7% falling again consistent with the slim vary of charges between 5.3% and 5.8% for different years since 2016.
Altogether, knowledge from the 2021 CHIS illustrate a surprisingly steady panorama of medical health insurance protection. The COVID-19 pandemic — which started in 2020 and continued into 2021 and past — had the potential to trigger huge losses of medical health insurance protection, primarily by declining ESI brought on by sharp job losses. However uninsurance charges didn’t spike, and ESI protection has not proven dramatic erosion in comparison with the prepandemic pattern.
Even because the pandemic endured into 2022, lots of the authorities helps that helped individuals keep protection through the disaster have already ended or are anticipated to sundown quickly. For instance, the expansion of Medi-Cal protection for key subpopulations through the pandemic is due largely to the continual protection provision related to the general public well being emergency, anticipated to finish someday in 2023. Whereas researchers venture that almost all Californians dropping Medi-Cal will likely be eligible for different forms of protection, as CHCF has written elsewhere, it is going to be important to take motion to maintain enrolled those that proceed to be eligible for Medi-Cal, and to attach those that grow to be ineligible to different sources of protection. This — in addition to different challenges, akin to inflation — could make holding onto California’s protection beneficial properties troublesome. To totally perceive whether or not and what sorts of impacts the pandemic triggered in California’s well being protection panorama, it is going to be important to proceed monitoring knowledge from 2022 and future years.
California
Caitlyn Jenner says she'd 'destroy' Kamala Harris in hypothetical race to be CA gov
SAN FRANCISCO – Caitlyn Jenner, the gold-medal Olympian-turned reality TV personality, is considering another run for Governor of California. This time, she says, if she were to go up against Vice President Kamala Harris, she would “destroy her.”
Jenner, who publicly came out as transgender nearly 10 years ago, made a foray into politics when she ran as a Republican during the recall election that attempted to unseat Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021. Jenner only received one percent of the vote and was not considered a serious candidate.
Jenner posted this week on social media that she’s having conversations with “many people” and hopes to have an announcement soon about whether she will run.
Caitlyn Jenner speaks at the 4th annual Womens March LA: Women Rising at Pershing Square on January 18, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Chelsea Guglielmino/Getty Images)
She has also posted in Trumpian-style all caps: “MAKE CA GREAT AGAIN!”
As for VP Harris, she has not indicated any future plans for when she leaves office. However, a recent poll suggests Harris would have a sizable advantage should she decide to run in 2026. At that point, Newsom cannot run again because of term limits.
If Jenner decides to run and wins, it would mark the nation and state’s first transgender governor.
California
Northern California 6-year-old, parents hailed as heroes for saving woman who crashed into canal
LIVE OAK — A six-year-old and her parents are being called heroes by a Northern California community for jumping into a canal to save a 75-year-old woman who drove off the road.
It happened on Larkin Road near Paseo Avenue in the Sutter County community of Live Oak on Monday.
“I just about lost her, but I didn’t,” said Terry Carpenter, husband of the woman who was rescued. “We got more chances.”
Terry said his wife of 33 years, Robin Carpenter, is the love of his life and soulmate. He is grateful he has been granted more time to spend with her after she survived her car crashing off a two-lane road and overturning into a canal.
“She’s doing really well,” Terry said. “No broken bones, praise the Lord.”
It is what some call a miracle that could have had a much different outcome without a family of good Samaritans.
“Her lips were purple,” said Ashley Martin, who helped rescue the woman. “There wasn’t a breath at all. I was scared.”
Martin and her husband, Cyle Johnson, are being hailed heroes by the Live Oak community for jumping into the canal, cutting Robin out of her seat belt and pulling her head above water until first responders arrived.
“She was literally submerged underwater,” Martin said. “She had a back brace on. Apparently, she just had back surgery. So, I grabbed her brace from down below and I flipped her upward just in a quick motion to get her out of that water.”
The couple said the real hero was their six-year-old daughter, Cayleigh Johnson.
“It was scary,” Cayleigh said. “So the car was going like this, and it just went boom, right into the ditch.”
Cayleigh was playing outside and screamed for her parents who were inside the house near the canal.
I spoke with Robin from her hospital bed over the phone who told us she is in a lot of pain but grateful.
“The thing I can remember is I started falling asleep and then I was going over the bump and I went into the ditch and that’s all I remember,” Robin said.
It was a split-second decision for a family who firefighters said helped save a stranger’s life.
“It’s pretty unique that someone would jump in and help somebody that they don’t even know,” said Battalion Chief for Sutter County Fire Richard Epperson.
Robin is hopeful that she will be released from the hospital on Wednesday in time to be home for Thanksgiving.
“She gets Thanksgiving and Christmas now with her family and grandkids,” Martin said.
Terry and Robin are looking forward to eventually meeting the family who helped save Robin’s life. The family expressed the same feelings about meeting the woman they helped when she is out of the hospital.
“I can’t wait for my baby to get home,” Terry said.
California
California may exclude Tesla from EV rebate program
California Gov. Gavin Newsom may exclude Tesla and other automakers from an electric vehicle (EV) rebate program if the incoming Trump administration scraps a federal tax credit for electric car purchases.
Newsom proposed creating a new version of the state’s Clean Vehicle Rebate Program, which was phased out in 2023 after funding more than 594,000 vehicles and saving more than 456 million gallons of fuel, the governor’s office said in a news release on Monday.
“Consumers continue to prove the skeptics wrong – zero-emission vehicles are here to stay,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re not turning back on a clean transportation future – we’re going to make it more affordable for people to drive vehicles that don’t pollute.”
The proposed rebates would be funded with money from the state’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is funded by polluters under the state’s cap-and-trade program, the governor’s office said. Officials did not say how much the program would cost or save consumers.
NEBRASKA AG LAUNCHES ASSAULT AGAINST CALIFORNIA’S ELECTRIC VEHICLE PUSH
They would also include changes to promote innovation and competition in the zero-emission vehicles market – changes that could prevent automakers like Tesla from qualifying for the rebates.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who relocated Tesla’s corporate headquarters from California to Texas in 2021, responded to the possibility of having Tesla EVs left out of the program.
“Even though Tesla is the only company who manufactures their EVs in California! This is insane,” Musk wrote on X, which he also owns.
BENTLEY PUSHES BACK ALL-EV LINEUP TIMELINE TO 2035
Those buying or leasing Tesla vehicles accounted for about 42% of the state’s rebates, The Associated Press reported, citing data from the California Air Resources Board.
Newsom’s office told Fox Business Digital that the proposal is intended to foster market competition, and any potential market cap is subject to negotiation with the state Legislature.
Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
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TSLA | TESLA INC. | 338.59 | -13.97 | -3.96% |
“Under a potential market cap, and depending on what the cap is, there’s a possibility that Tesla and other automakers could be excluded,” the governor’s office said. “But that’s again subject to negotiations with the legislature.”
Newsom’s office noted that such market caps have been part of rebate programs since George W. Bush’s administration in 2005.
Federal tax credits for EVs are currently worth up to $7,500 for new zero-emission vehicles. President-elect Trump has previously vowed to end the credit.
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California has surpassed 2 million zero-emission vehicles sold, according to the governor’s office. The state, however, could face a $2 billion budget deficit next year, Reuters reported, citing a non-partisan legislative estimate released last week.
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