BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
SB 997 (Lara) - Health care coverage: immigration status
-----------------------------------------------------------------
| |
| |
| |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------|
| | |
|Version: April 20, 2016 |Policy Vote: HEALTH 7 - 1 |
| | |
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------|
| | |
|Urgency: No |Mandate: No |
| | |
|--------------------------------+--------------------------------|
| | |
|Hearing Date: May 27, 2016 |Consultant: Brendan McCarthy |
| | |
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Bill
Summary: SB 997 requires undocumented children who are eligible
for full-scope Medi-Cal coverage and who are enrolled in
low-cost coverage provided by Kaiser Permanente or another
Medi-Cal managed care plan to be enrolled in full-scope Medi-Cal
with the same health plan.
*********** ANALYSIS ADDENDUM - SUSPENSE FILE ***********
The following information is revised to reflect amendments
adopted by the committee on May 27, 2016
Fiscal
Impact:
Likely one-time administrative costs of about $1 million for
the Department of Health Care Services to coordinate with
health plans and determine Medi-Cal eligibility for current
low-cost coverage enrollees (General Fund). The Department
will need to collect information from health plans about their
current low-cost coverage enrollees who are likely to gain
SB 997 (Lara) Page 1 of
?
full-scope Medi-Cal eligibility, determine eligibility for
those individuals, and set up a special process for those
individuals to be directly enrolled with the same health plan
under full scope Medi-Cal. Because this is not the normal
process for determining Medi-Cal eligibility and assigning
enrollees to a Medi-Cal managed health plan, there will be
additional workload for the Department. (Because undocumented
immigrants are generally not eligible for federal financial
participation, all costs will be General Fund costs.)
Likely increased Medi-Cal costs in the millions per year due
to increased enrollment in Medi-Cal under the bill (General
Fund). Under current law, undocumented immigrants under 19
years of age will be eligible for full-scope Medi-Cal on or
after May 1, 2016. The undocumented children who are the
subject of this bill will soon become eligible for full scope
Medi-Cal. However, without the bill, those children's' parents
will need to enroll them in Medi-Cal through the normal
application process. Given that these children are already
enrolled in health care coverage (often with a modest monthly
fee per child), it is likely that a high percentage of these
children's' parents will enroll them in Medi-Cal. However,
there is likely to be a small share of the current population
that will not enroll in Medi-Cal through the normal enrollment
process. Under the bill, the streamlined enrollment into
Medi-Cal is likely to reduce the number of individuals who
would lose coverage during the transition. For example, if 10%
of current program participants would not have transitioned to
Medi-Cal coverage without the bill and the bill reduces that
share to 5% losing coverage, the state cost for that
additional Medi-Cal coverage would be about $7 million per
year.
Author
Amendments: Clarify how information would be provided to the
families of enrollees, authorize the Department to implement the
bill without taking regulatory action, and require a report from
the Department.
-- END --
SB 997 (Lara) Page 2 of
?