Hundreds of Thousands Could Be Booted From CalFresh and Medi-Cal. This Bill Aims to Help

As new federal work requirements leave hundreds of thousands of Californians at risk of losing Medi-Cal and food stamps, the state Legislature is considering a bill that aims to ensure eligible recipients keep their benefits.

Under H.R. 1, the major Republican spending bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed last summer, working-age adults without children will be required to put in 20 hours a week of work, school or volunteering in order to maintain their benefits. The new requirement goes into effect Jan. 1, 2027.

As a result of those changes, the California Legislative Analyst’s office estimates that up to 2 million people could get dropped from Medi-Cal, and around 840,000 could lose CalFresh food aid. Some of those recipients would be disqualified because they don’t meet the work requirement. Others may simply be unable to manage the new bureaucratic requirement of documenting their hours for the government twice a year.

State Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, D-West Sacramento, drafted a solution that he hopes will prevent people from losing benefits for failing to report their hours.

His bill, SB 1054, would instead require employers to provide that information to the state Employment Development Department — which already collects data on employee wages to administer unemployment benefits. The bill would then authorize the EDD to share that data with the state health and social service agencies that determine eligibility for Medi-Cal and CalFresh.

“Congress has opened up a giant chasm for Californians to fall into and lose their Medi-Cal coverage,” Cabaldon said. “We can use our data systems to thwart that cynical ploy and make sure that Californians don’t get booted off because of a paper processing requirement.”

The bill passed out of the Senate Labor, Public Employment and Retirement Committee last month with unanimous, bipartisan support. Currently, it’s set for an April 13 hearing at the Appropriations Committee.

Monica Saucedo, a senior fellow at the California Budget and Policy Center, said the federal spending bill is putting extra pressure on state policymakers who are trying to ensure a social safety net for Californians, all while the state faces a budget deficit in the coming year.

“H.R. 1 has put state leaders in a really tough spot,” she said. “Introducing creative solutions — like ensuring that data can be shared across agencies, and the burden is removed off of the individuals — is a really good way to try to mitigate this harm.”

She applauded Cabaldon’s bill but said she’s concerned about a bigger problem: not just the work reporting requirement, but the work requirement itself. According to Saucedo, it’s the first time in the history of the Medicaid program, known in California as Medi-Cal, that people have been required to work to maintain their health coverage.

Roughly 1 in 3 Californians is covered by Medi-Cal.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, has said the work requirement helps “return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day.”

But Saucedo said most people receiving benefits are already working, and research has shown that such requirements don’t increase employment or earnings.

Saucedo called the work reporting requirements “a bad policy.” “It really is just another way of … pushing people off of the programs,” she said.

What Cabaldon’s bill does not do is change who is eligible for health and food aid. It would not restore access to Medi-Cal and CalFresh for tens of thousands of lawfully present immigrants in California — including refugees and asylees, DACA recipients and Temporary Protected Status holders. Under H.R. 1, they became ineligible for CalFresh on April 1 and will lose Medi-Cal on Oct. 1.

Benyamin Chao, a policy manager with the California Immigrant Policy Center, said he wants to see state lawmakers find a solution for those immigrants as well.

“It’s heartbreaking to see these cuts go into effect,” he said. “Given the amount of contributions that immigrants make, tax-wise or just through our social fabric in California, now is really that test for our leaders in Sacramento, whether we will make those investments.”

Chao’s organization is working with Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, on SB 1422, a different bill that aims to restore state-funded health coverage to low-income working-age Californians — regardless of immigration status or whether the federal government will pay for it.

Cabaldon said his bill would offer another benefit: improved data sharing between state agencies that could help California improve the college and career training programs it funds.

“We have the data we need in order to make much smarter decisions and evaluations about where we’re spending our workforce development training dollars, but … it’s not used for that purpose,” he said.

The “nerdy side” of the bill, as Cabaldon called it, would enable the state government to share necessary data “to improve the effectiveness of our workforce development and education programs, to make sure that folks get and keep high-quality, good-paying jobs and careers.”