CARE Act Bills Continue to Move
This week, outgoing CSAP Government Affairs Committee Chairman Dr. Aaron Meyer again made the trip up to Sacramento to see two bills pass out of the Assembly Judicary Committee. Both bills passed 14-0 with two abstentions and now head to the Assembly Health Committee.
- SB 16 (Blakespear), sponsored by CSAP, would require the behavioral health agencies of all 58 counties in California to create a procedure on how they designate 5150 authority. Currently, this is a permissive authority that some counties have implemented, but not all.
- SB 28 (Umberg), supported by CSAP, makes a sweeping amount of important changes to the CARE Act. Among those, it would establish the office of a CARE Ombudsman, a desperately needed component of oversight in the program.
AB 2011 (Hart) Nonquantitative treatment limitations
An important CSAP co-sponsored bill, AB 2011 (Hart), received a very troubling fiscal analysis from the Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC). The specific numbers are detailed below. This fiscal analysis is astounding, as it involves work the Department should already be doing to ensure the parity is occurring to the best extent possible in California. CSAP, our co-sponsors, and the author will be meeting with DMHC soon to discuss their rationale.
As a reminder, AB 2011 would codify the 2024 federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act Final Rule into California state law — protecting Californians’ mental health and substance use disorder parity rights regardless of what unfolds at the federal level. CSAP is co-sponsoring AB 2011 the California Department of Insurance, the Kennedy Forum, the Steinberg Institute, and CALACAP.
In the most recent bill analysis, DMHC estimates state administrative costs of approximately $18,454,000 in 2026-27, $46,668,000 in 2027-28, $67,835,000 in 2028-29, $70,952,000 in 2029-30, $72,166,000 in 2030-31, and $72,386,000 in 2031-32 and annually thereafter for state administration (Managed Care Fund).