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How will Trump change health care? California braces for fights over insurance and abortion

Source: CalMatters

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The Democratic supermajority in the California Capitol, however, has spent the past several years passing laws to stymie future conservative administrations on health care, said Mia Bonta, chairperson of the Assembly health committee and a Democrat from Oakland. 

Legislators have protected insurance coverage of abortion and transgender care. They have expanded health insurance programs to low-income undocumented immigrants and paid for it with state funds. They have taken pieces of the Affordable Care Act and written it into state law, expanding the enrollment period and banning lifetime limits on coverage. And they’ve invested millions of dollars into public health after the system languished for a decade.

“We were able to be very deliberate in the past several years to Trump-proof our health system moving forward,” Bonta said.

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Bonta said she plans on introducing bills to further protect reproductive rights on the first day of the legislative session. Those bills would require hospitals to provide emergency abortions, protect birth control for Medi-Cal recipients and ease the regulation of birth centers. Bonta said lawmakers are working quickly and she expects many of the bills introduced in December to have urgency clauses that allow immediate implementation.

“It’s going to be a huge change within the health care space,” she said.