Low-Income Children Are Losing Both Healthcare and Food Benefits

Read the article from Georgetown University HERE

Millions of low-income children are being stripped of both their health coverage and their food assistance at the same time. Since January 2025, 2.56 million children have fallen off Medicaid and CHIP nationally, and in the 26 states with comparable data, child SNAP enrollment dropped 15.7 percent — falling two and a half times faster than Medicaid. The driver is H.R. 1, the largest combined Medicaid and SNAP cut in history, with children making up roughly 42 percent of those who lost food benefits since July 2025: whole families cut off, not just adults. Georgetown CCF calls this the “unwelcome mat” effect.

Those federal cuts are still pending, and California’s Democratic supermajority has mounted no viable response. CalCare, the policy framework bill, would have moved the state aggressively in that direction — and it never even got a hearing. API for CalCare, as a member of California United for Single Payer (CUSP) coalition is playing the long game: organizing the base, district by district, so the next bill is impossible to bury.