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Background
For over 35 years, Health Access California, the statewide health care consumer advocacy coalition, has served as the leading voice on behalf of patients and the public on critical health policy issues at the State Capitol. We also advocate for health care consumers in federal policy discussions and analyze impacts. As a counterpoint to the health industry— health insurers, hospitals, doctors, and drug companies—we ensure policymakers put patients and the public before profits. Over the years, we have sponsored legislation to expand access to coverage and care, strengthen consumer protections, control health care costs and reform our health system. Our legislative and administrative victories include the HMO Patient Bill of Rights, Hospital Fair Pricing Act, regulations ensuring patients have timely access to care, a ban on surprise medical & ambulance bills, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, and the dozens of bills implementing and improving upon the Affordable Care Act in California. We seek to bring our policy expertise, grassroots power, and coalition strength to win reforms that improve the health care system for all Californians.
In 2024, Health Access and our coalition partners advanced measures that would provide real relief and remove financial barriers to accessing health care for millions of California health consumers. Californians will benefit from the success of several health care bills this year, which: remove medical debt from credit reports, ensure more preventative health services at zero-cost, expand health care benefits to include infertility treatments, and reduce bias and improve equity in our care. While we may be facing difficult headwinds in 2025 under a Trump Administration, this year’s legislative wins strengthened the health care system we all rely on and further fortified our state’s efforts to ensure more universal, affordable, and equitable health care for all Californians.
The 2024 Health Access California Legislative Scorecard details how each state Assemblymember and Senator voted on legislation Health Access sponsored or prioritized. The scoring reflects aye, nay, and not voting tabulations, with many members, such as those on Health committees, with many more opportunities to support—or not support—these bills. Among the bills scored, 11 were a part of the Care4All California package of legislation. Since 2018, the #Care4AllCA campaign has built on the success of the Affordable Care Act towards universal coverage, leveraging what is achievable in California without significant federal approval. The #Care4AllCA coalition is made up of over 70 consumer, community, labor, progressive, and health care organizations from across the state.
We recognize that votes on legislation itself do not tell the whole story, especially when much of the progress made in health care is achieved through the state budget. This scorecard does not reflect budget votes, and the work of many legislative champions to preserve California’s $165 million investment to eliminate deductibles and lower
co-pays for nearly 600,000 Californians who purchase their care through Covered California—even in a difficult budget year.
This year also saw a huge win for affordability efforts as the state’s new Office of Health Care Affordability, established in the 2022 state budget, took its first major action to set a 3% health care cost-growth target over the next 5 years, ensuring that health care costs won’t rise more than what people earn.
While this scorecard includes many key health bills from 2024, it is not a comprehensive review of all health bills that were considered or supported this past legislative session, nor is it a complete picture of a legislator’s record on health policy. This scorecard’s information should be considered alongside the others Health Access has published over many years. With all those caveats, we hope this scorecard provides useful background and accountability for anyone who is working towards the goals of universality, affordability, quality, equity, and justice in our health care system. The list below details each bill, and the percentage legislators scored when they had the opportunity to show support for bills to benefit health care consumers.
Health Care Consumer Superstar
Assemblymember Dr. Jim Wood served as chair of the Assembly Health Committee for over 8 years and championed the passage of many significant reforms on behalf of California health care consumers over his tenure. He took on large hospital systems and insurance companies to push legislation to expand oversight of potentially harmful mergers and forced Big Pharma to the table to lower the price of prescription drugs and pull back on their anti-competitive practices. He also championed greater affordability in our health care system spearheading the creation of the Office of Health Care Affordability, which recently set a cost-growth benchmark for the entire health care industry. Access to health care became much easier for millions of Californians with his efforts to lower premiums, deductibles, and co-pays for those in Covered California. As Assemblymember Wood departs the legislature this year, we thank him for his many years of service, and name him our first Health Care Consumer Super Star for his work to improve our health care system for all Californians.
Bill Descriptions
Provider Directory Accuracy and Accountability: AB 236 (Holden)
Requires health plan accountability to ensure accuracy of provider directories. The bill mandates that health plans annually verify the information in their directories according to standards set by the Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) and the Department of Insurance (CDI), and links existing requirements to accuracy benchmarks
to strengthen enforcement.
Held in Senate Appropriations Committee
Medi-Cal Medically Supportive Food and Nutrition Interventions: AB 1975 (Bonta)
Adds medically supportive food and nutrition interventions as covered Medi-Cal benefits upon appropriation and no sooner than July 2026.
Vetoed by Governor Newsom
Social Determinants of Health Screening and Outreach: AB 2250 (Weber)
Mandates that health care plans cover screenings for social determinants of health and ensure providers use standardized codes when documenting patient responses. Additionally, AB 2250 requires health care plans to give primary care providers adequate access to peer support specialists, lay health workers, social workers, or community health workers.
Vetoed by Governor Newsom
Cost-sharing for Preventive Services and STI: AB 2258 (Zbur)
Codifies long-standing federal guidance requiring coverage of services integral to recommended preventive care—including HIV and STI screenings for PrEP and cervical cancer screenings – without any cost-sharing.
Signed by Governor Newsom
Hospital and Emergency Physician Fair Pricing: AB 2297 (Friedman)
Alleviates the financial stress caused by medical debt by prohibiting home liens to collect unpaid medical bills from eligible patients and clarifies existing eligibility rules to ensure low- and moderate-income Californians receive financial assistance.
Signed by Governor Newsom
California Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act: AB 2319 (Wilson)
Acknowledges nonbinary and transgender individuals as birthing people and expands implicit bias training requirements for health care providers offering perinatal care, ensuring the training addresses intersecting identities and potential biases. It also mandates compliance reporting and grants the Attorney General the authority to enforce penalties and publish compliance data.
Signed by Governor Newsom
Covered California Emergency Rulemaking Extension: AB 2435 (Maienschein)
Extends emergency rulemaking authority for Covered California until 2030 with authority for two additional readoptions until January 1, 2035.
Signed by Governor Newsom
Timely Access to Medi-Cal Mental Health Services for Children: AB 2466 (Carrillo)
Ensures timely access standards are met for children and youth enrolled in Medi-Cal who are accessing mental and behavioral health care services.
Held in Assembly Appropriations Committee
Rehabilitative and Habilitative Services: AB 2753 (Ortega)
Clarifies that durable medical equipment is a covered essential health benefit in California-regulated health plans and policies when prescribed by a doctor for rehabilitative or habilitative purposes.
Held in Assembly Appropriations Committee
Medi-Cal Redeterminations: AB 2956 (Boerner)
Requires the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to seek federal approval to extend various processes in the Medi-Cal program, establishing continuous eligibility for Medi-Cal coverage for individuals over 19 years of age for 12 months at a time.
Held in Assembly Appropriations Committee
Health Care Consolidation: AB 3129 (Wood)
Extends the CA Attorney General’s existing health care oversight to certain private equity or hedge fund acquisitions or changes in control of health care facilities and physician organizations. Gives AG the authority to review the transactions for the impacts on competition, quality, affordability, and access to care.
Vetoed by Governor Newsom
Bias and Discrimination in Health Facilities: AB 3161 (Bonta)
Requires health facilities to update their health and safety plans to include anonymous reporting options and to address racism, discrimination, and sociodemographic disparities, along with strategies for developing interventions to remedy these issues.
Signed by Governor Newsom
Automatic IMR Referrals for Youth Behavioral Health: SB 294 (Wiener)
Requires automatic review – either through the grievance or independent medical review (IMR) process of all commercial insurance denials of youth behavioral health treatment.
Held in Assembly Appropriations Committee
Fertility Coverage: SB 729 (Menjivar)
Requires large group health plans to provide coverage for diagnosis and treatment of infertility and fertility services.
Signed by Governor Newsom
SOGI Data Collection: SB 957 (Wiener)
Updates the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Disparities Reduction Act by replacing “intersexuality” with “variations in sex characteristics/intersex status” and mandates the California Department of Public Health (DPH) to collect demographic Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Sexual Characteristics (SOGISC) data from third parties. It requires health care providers to only disclose voluntarily provided SOGISC information, allowing the DPH to prepare and annually post a report on SOGISC data on its website.
Signed by Governor Newsom
Medical Debt: SB 1061 (Limón)
Prohibits credit reporting agencies from placing medical debt to health care providers on credit reports, and medical debt from negatively affecting credit scores.
Signed by Governor Newsom
Medigap Protections: SB 1236 (Blakespear)
Ensures that people on Medicare Supplemental Insurance, known as Medigap, are protected from being penalized for having pre-existing medical conditions the same way all Americans are protected in the regular private health insurance markets.
Held in Senate Appropriations Committee
See the data
