LOS ANGELES, CA.- Over 300,000 children have lost their health coverage in California as a result of the withdrawal of the Medical Coverage Protection Act for California (AB 2956) bill.
The initiative, which aimed to protect California’s most vulnerable population and allow adults enrolled in Medi-Cal to maintain their coverage for 12 full months and Medi-Cal renewal, sought to reduce the unjust cancellations that Californians currently experience.
All of this creates a breeding ground that puts millions of Californians at risk of losing their Medi-Cal coverage, it was warned.
And it’s worth mentioning that in San Diego County alone, over 325,000 children are depending on Medi-Cal services, and around 9,000 children have lost this vital benefit compared to last year.
Mayra E. Alvarez, president of the nonprofit organization “The Children’s Partnership,” which co-sponsored this bill, stated that the vast majority of enrollment cancellations result from procedural reasons, not eligibility.
She emphasized that this puts children at risk of losing coverage due to barriers such as renewal forms not being received, as well as long wait times for phone calls for parents to have their questions addressed.
IT CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
“Even relatively short gaps in Medi-Cal coverage can mean the difference between obtaining timely early intervention in development that growing children and their families need to lead a healthy life and dangerously falling behind in healthy child development,” said Alvarez.
It was also recalled in the same context that in April 2023, California restarted the process of reviewing and renewing eligibility for Medi-Cal for the first time since Medi-Cal renewals were suspended in March 2020, known as “Medi-Cal Disconnection.”
OVER 1.5 MILLION CALIFORNIANS LOST MEDI-CAL COVERAGE
It was also revealed that more than 1.6 million Californians have lost their Medi-Cal coverage in the first 10 months of this relaxation period: the overwhelming majority are people of color, and approximately half of all people disenrolled are Latinos.
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