Millions of Californians may lose health coverage because of new Medicaid work requirements

The work requirement is the first to be imposed nationwide in the six-decade history of Medicaid, the program that provides free and subsidized health insurance to disabled and low-income Americans

How the rule will be rolled out is still under discussion, but one Los Angeles County health plan that serves about 2.3 million people on Medi-Cal said more than 1 million people could lose their insurance

The nation’s first mandated work requirement for Medicaid recepients, approved by the Republican-led Congress and signed by President Trump, is expected to have a seismic effect in California.

One estimate from state health officials suggests that as many as 3.4 million people could lose their insurance through what Gov. Gavin Newsom calls the “labyrinth of manual verification,” which inv