Hopeton Leahong, a family nurse practitioner, examines Ramonte Means at St. John's Community Health's Avalon Clinic in Los Angeles on Feb. 7, 2026. Photo by Jules Hotz for CalMatters
Two years ago, California hit a milestone decades in the making: Nearly every person in the state qualified for health insurance, regardless of immigration status and income, pushing the state’s insured rate to a record 95%. Now that progress is unraveling.
Facing budget shortfalls and new federal restrictions, state leaders have begun rolling back the coverage system they built. Analysts at the UC Berkeley Labor Center and UCLA Center for Health Policy Research project California’s uninsured rate could nearly double, to almost 15%, by 2030.
“I knew it was going to be bad, but seeing that doubling was shocking to me,” said Miranda Dietz, director of the labor center’s healthcare program.
An estimated 2.2 million people could lose insurance over the next four years from combined state and federal cuts, the researchers found. The losses will fall hardest on undocumented immigrants and low-income Californians, with the uninsured rate more than doubling among Black and Asian Californians. The southern part of the state will bear the brunt, driven by its larger…
