SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California has enrolled 2.3 million people under an optional expansion of the state’s Medicaid program — nearly three times more than the state had anticipated, according to the state Department of Finance.
Beyond that, a record number of people who already qualified for the low-income health program signed up, pushing overall enrollment in the state’s Medicaid program known as Medi-Cal past 12 million to roughly one in three Californians.
In that time, the overall cost of the program has jumped to $115.4 billion from $91.5 billion, although much of the extra funding is supplied by the federal government.
California officials say the decision to expand has injected billions of federal dollars into the state’s economy, and they say the state is prepared to handle the additional costs through long-term budgeting and better coordination with other social programs.
“California has been at the national forefront of implementing the Affordable Care Act and will continue to be,” said Gov. Jerry Brown’s finance spokesman, H.D. Palmer.
Still, Republicans worry that Democrats who control the Capitol will look to raise taxes to make up the funding.
Lawmakers have convened a special legislative session to decide how to raise at least $1.3 billion to increase payments to doctors, dentists and hospitals that treat Medi-Cal patients, as well as to replace more than $1 billion that will be lost from a health plan tax that no longer complies with federal rules.
The governor wants lawmakers to expand the so-called managed care organization tax currently levied on health plans that accept Medi-Cal patients and include most plans regulated by the Department of Managed Health Care. Doing so, the administration says, would allow California to meet new federal requirements for a broad-based tax and draw matching funds. The proposal was put into a bill by Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, his office announced Thursday.
