Medi-Cal

The California Medical Assistance Program (Medi-Cal or MediCal) is the California implementation of the federal Medicaid program serving low-income individuals, including families, seniors, persons with disabilities, children in foster care, pregnant women, and childless adults with incomes below 138% of federal poverty level. Benefits include ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder treatment, dental (Denti-Cal), vision, and long-term care and support. Medi-Cal was created in 1965 by the California Medical Assistance Program a few months after the national legislation was passed. Approximately 15.28 million people were enrolled in Medi-Cal as of September 2022, or about 40% of California's population; in most counties, more than half of eligible residents were enrolled as of 2020. As of 2025, about 56% of children in California use the program.

==Eligibility== Medi-Cal provides health coverage for people with low income and limited ability to pay for health coverage, including the aged, blind, disabled, young adults and children, pregnant women, persons in a skilled nursing or intermediate care home, and persons in the Breast and Cervical Cancer Treatment Program (BCCTP). People receiving federally funded cash assistance programs, such as CalWORKs (a state implementation of the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program), the State Supplementation Program (SSP) (a state supplement to the federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program), foster care, adoption assistance, certain refugee assistance programs, or In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) are also eligible.