{"id":504429,"date":"2026-10-22T17:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T17:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/504429\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T17:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T17:20:14","slug":"santa-clara-contra-costa-expand-uninsured-care-as-medi-cal-cuts-loom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/504429\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Clara, Contra Costa expand uninsured care as Medi-Cal cuts loom"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Bay Area hospitals see hundreds more patients without insurance<\/a> and brace for more in 2027, two counties are expanding financial assistance programs for those struggling to pay for care.<\/p>\n

Santa Clara County and Contra Costa County will spend millions more on patient care next year as federal budget measures under President Donald Trump slash billions for healthcare to California and reduce enrollment in Medi-Cal, the government insurance program for people with low incomes.<\/p>\n

However, staff and executives in both counties said the enhanced benefits will cover only a slice of the need as residents lose Medi-Cal coverage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will still be some people, of course, who lose coverage,\u201d County Executive James Williams said at the meeting. \u201cBut for everyone we can keep on coverage, it actually mitigates the fiscal impacts, and it of course, most powerfully, mitigates the impacts to them and their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

Santa Clara Valley Healthcare will rebrand and expand its health access program to absorb up to 10,000 more people without insurance who don\u2019t qualify for other insurance in 2027. However, federal and state budget reductions taking effect in January are expected to increase the county\u2019s uninsured population by up to 70,000 people next year.<\/p>\n

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, which oversees the health system\u2019s budget, approved a plan Tuesday to expand health services available to the uninsured. Formerly called the Primary Care Access Program, the program will be renamed Valley Care. The board had already approved $25 million more for the program as thousands more patients took advantage of the help starting last fall.<\/p>\n

The program subsidizes healthcare costs on an income-based, sliding scale. Before the expansion, patients could see primary care doctors and some specialists at the network of hospitals or community health clinics.\u00a0At the board meeting, Williams stressed that the program is not a replacement for Medi-Cal and said county staff are prioritizing the administrative work of keeping enrollees eligible for the insurance coverage.<\/p>\n

Starting in January, members will have access to subsidized care at emergency rooms, urgent care, labs and appointments with more specialists, Santa Clara Valley Healthcare CEO Paul Lorenz told the board. For a single person eligible for the program earning less than $32,000 a year, a hospitalization would cost $45 and an urgent care visit would be $5.<\/p>\n

Lorenz described the program as a strategy to keep vulnerable community members healthy and contain costs, as the state and federal government pay less for care.<\/p>\n

The $4.7 billion safety-net network of four hospitals and a slew of clinics is largely reliant on reimbursements from the state and federal governments for treating patients with Medi-Cal. But between 25,000 and 70,000 county residents are estimated to lose Medi-Cal coverage next year, when federal rules require certain enrollees to work, volunteer or go to school part-time to keep their benefits.<\/p>\n

Those patients are expected to continue using safety-net health systems like Santa Clara Valley Healthcare, which are legally required to provide care to low-income and uninsured people who have no other options. However, the system would no longer be reimbursed through Medi-Cal for newly uninsured patients, posing a major budget challenge.<\/p>\n

By managing care for those patients with primary and preventative care visits, Lorenz said the system can limit expensive emergency room costs. Staff will help patients learn if they\u2019re eligible for the program, and enrollees will receive new cards in the mail, he said.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday approved a plan to make more residents eligible for its Basic Health Care Program, also geared toward low-income and uninsured people, and make assistance more generous.<\/p>\n

A slew of health and immigrant advocates had urged supervisors to expand the program as the county projected that 93,000 residents could lose insurance by 2031.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, this is an emergency,\u201d said Supervisor Shanelle Scales-Preston, who represents Pittsburg and Martinez, at the board meeting. \u201cWe need to move as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Previously, the program was available to people without another insurance option who earned slightly too much to qualify for Medi-Cal: an income range of more than $22,000 to less than about $48,000 for a single person.<\/p>\n

With the expansion, people earning less than $22,000 will also be eligible. The plan, approved by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday, also eliminates small fees enrollees had paid.<\/p>\n

The beefed-up program will cost an additional $6 million, on top of the total annual cost of $7.5 million, and will roll out by March, according to county staff.<\/p>\n

The federal work requirements for Medi-Cal recipients go into effect on Jan. 1. Then, social services agencies must re-determine the eligibility of enrollees every six months. About 1.3 million Californians are expected to lose their Medi-Cal coverage by 2030, according to a state agency.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom has also planned to pare back Medi-Cal coverage for immigrants<\/a>, just a few years after his expansion of benefits to immigrants without legal status<\/a> in particular. His administration has frozen new Medi-Cal enrollment for those immigrants and\u00a0plans to reduce access to benefits in other ways in 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As Bay Area hospitals see hundreds more patients without insurance and brace for more in 2027, two counties…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[195051,195052,392,195049,88,90,89,198,186841,195050],"class_list":["post-504429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-basic-health-care-program","tag-bay-area-healthcare","tag-contra-costa-county","tag-medi-cal-cuts","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-santa-clara-county","tag-uninsured-patients","tag-valley-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}