On the First Anniversary of the House’s Vote for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the Fight for Our Health Coalition Warns the the Devastation from the Bill Will Be Worse than Thought with Millions of Californians on the Verge of Losing Coverage

Releases New Factsheet on Damage Already Done and What’s to Come for Californians

SACRAMENTO, CA — One year ago, members of the House of Representatives – including nine Congressmembers from California – voted to pass President Trump’s H.R. 1 — the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” — setting off a health care death spiral that has already pushed hundreds of thousands of Californians out of coverage, sent premiums skyrocketing for millions more, and threatens to bury working families in paperwork just to keep the care they have. All this to give nearly a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the biggest and most profitable corporations and billionaires. 

Today, the Fight for Our Health coalition marks that anniversary with a new factsheet and a warning: what we’ve seen so far is only the beginning.

California Congressmembers Voted to Cut Care for Nearly 2.5 Million of Their Own Constituents
Below is a list of the California Representatives that voted to pass H.R. 1, and the number of people on Medi-Cal in their districts that are now at risk of losing coverage, benefits, or paying more for their care: 

Doug LaMalfa (CA-01)*: 316,800

Kevin Kiley (CA-03): 161,200

Tom McClintock (CA-05): 230,900

Vince Fong (CA-20): 277,100

*Deceased

David Valadao (CA-22): 495,200

Jay Obernolte (CA-23): 355,400

Young Kim (CA-40): 162,000

Ken Calvert (CA-41): 233,000

Darrell Issa (CA-48): 207,400

The Damage Is Real and Growing
Nearly 3 million Californians are now projected to fully lose Medi-Cal by 2028 due to a mix of federal cuts and reductions in state budget investments in our care. And that was before we saw new restrictions on exemptions to work requirements due to “medical frailty” issued by the federal government on June 1 that will likely make it worse.

On top of H.R. 1, new Covered California sign-ups collapsed by 32% in 2026 after Congress refused to extend enhanced federal subsidies — and for the 1.7 million Californians who lost that assistance, premiums surged by an average of 97%. A family of three earning $80,000 a year now pays $249 more every month. A 60-year-old freelancer earning the same saw her premium nearly double.

The Worst Is Yet to Come
Beginning in January 2027, most working-age Medi-Cal enrollees must prove they work, attend school, volunteer 80 hours a month or prove their exemption — or lose their coverage. Nearly 2 million Californians are projected to lose care from this change alone. The new federal rules issued June 1 extend those barriers even further and likely drive up that number higher. The cruelest truth: 63% of working-age Medi-Cal enrollees are already employed. One in three workers in agriculture, restaurants, and building services relies on Medi-Cal. Those who aren’t working are caregivers, students, or people in treatment. They won’t lose coverage because they don’t qualify — they’ll lose it because they couldn’t navigate a broken paperwork system in time.

The law’s doubled pace of eligibility checks — now every six months instead of annually — creates twice as many opportunities to push eligible people off their coverage through paperwork alone.

H.R. 1 Targets Low-Income Communities and Communities of Color
H.R. 1’s harm falls hardest on communities of color. Latinos — 52% of Medi-Cal enrollees — will bear more than half of all work requirement losses. For California’s 1.6 million undocumented residents on Medi-Cal, the cut is permanent: they lose coverage and can’t get it back. 

The Long Road Ahead
California stands to lose more than $9.6 billion in combined state and federal revenue by 2029-30 — and that number is climbing. The state has invested what it can to minimize the damage in Medi-Cal this year and committed $300 million to protect its lowest-income Covered California enrollees. The Legislature’s Fair Share from Big Corporations Act would require large employers – who benefited most from the tax breaks in H.R. 1 and who don’t cover the health of their workers – to help pay for the public cost they’ve created. But no state budget can fully absorb billions in cuts annually. The safety net California spent a decade building is being dismantled in Washington — and every Californian will pay the price.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING:

Rachel Linn Gish, Interim Deputy Director, Health Access California:
“One year in, the evidence is undeniable: H.R. 1 is making life harder for millions of Californians who are paying more, covered by less, or no longer covered at all. And the provisions that will cause the most damage — the work requirements, the eligibility purges, the paperwork traps — haven’t even fully taken effect yet. Those that voted for it should feel ashamed, and we will not stop showing up to hold them accountable for the votes they’ve taken to strip away our health care coverage.”

Kiran Savage-Sangwan, Executive Director, California Pan Ethnic Health Network:
“H.R. 1 was designed to target the communities who can least afford to lose access to care. Latino Californians make up more than half of Medi-Cal enrollees and will be disproportionately harmed by new paperwork requirements. This is not a policy that happened to fall unevenly; this is a policy designed to push communities of color out of the health care system. Immigrant communities stood up to fight back against state cuts; we won’t stop fighting attacks on health care based solely on where we were born.”  

Judy Mark, President, Disability Voices United:
“People with disabilities were already fighting to be seen in this debate. The new federal rules issued June 1 make clear the administration still doesn’t see us. Requiring states to determine whether a medically frail person’s condition ‘impairs’ their ability to meet work requirements isn’t a protection — it’s another barrier, another form, another opportunity to lose coverage not because you don’t qualify but because the system made it impossible to prove it. Disabled Californians deserve better than a bureaucratic gauntlet standing between them and their health care.”

The Fight for Our Health coalition — led by Health Access, the California Pan Ethnic Health Network, SEIU California, and Disability Voices United — is committed to defending affordable health care for all Californians against federal cuts that have already caused widespread harm and threaten far worse in the years ahead.

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