Medi-Cal is Unwinding – Here’s What You Can Do

The last few months have been extra busy – not only fulfilling my duties as your Representative, and the Chairwoman of the Hispanic Caucus, but also working to make sure constituents know that this year Medi-Cal recipients must respond and fill out paperwork to stay on Medi-Cal. If you don’t, you will lose Medi-Cal health coverage. My own mother is 82 with Alzheimer’s disease, is low-income and relies on Medi-Cal for her healthcare. Despite the critical role programs like Medi-Cal play in the lives of many families, Republicans are pushing for cuts.

Medicaid—the national name for Medi-Cal and similar programs in other states—is the single biggest source of health coverage in the U.S. Its expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) led to historic lows in the number of people who are uninsured and saved thousands of lives by simply allowing people to access healthcare when they needed it. It has also played a critical role in boosting coverage for Latino people – after most states began expanding Medicaid in 2014, the uninsured rate for Latinos under 65 fell from 33% to a record low of 17.7%. In California, the proportion of Latinos without any health care plummeted from 29% to 12%.

But those rates are changing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress authorized a change to Medi-Cal’s enrollment rules, to ensure that more people could stay on the programs and have access to healthcare when they need it most, even if they made too much money annually to qualify. Now that the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency declaration has ended, so has continuous enrollment. This means that states are now resuming normal operations, including normal termination policies.

Beginning April 1, 2023, states began reevaluating coverage under Medi-Cal and similar programs in other states. This process, called “unwinding,” means that the state and California’s counties will consider if each Medi-Cal recipient is eligible. In California, that’s 14 million people who rely on Medi-Cal and Healthy Families for healthcare. To be eligible, you must respond to the request for information and paperwork. When you receive this paperwork, it is essential that you do not ignore it! You must respond to the inquiry within a timely manner, or risk losing your Medi-Cal. If you got a notice that your Medi-Cal was terminated, you can still get it reinstated.

For many older Americans, Medi-Cal helps them stay retired and out of poverty. For many Latinos, including my mom, Medi-Cal is lifesaving coverage that provides access to essential health care services that they may not be able to access otherwise. My mom received her paperwork in the mail, and it took time for me to make sure that everything was completed properly and she wasn’t going to lose her coverage.

In the three months since unwinding began, over 1.5 million people have lost coverage through Medi-Cal and similar programs in other states. The number will only increase as unwinding continues for the next year. Make sure that you or your loved ones keep coverage by responding to the paperwork as soon as you receive it.

(*) Nanette Barragán is U.S. representative for California’s 44th congressional district since 2017.