The 2026-27 Budget: Department of Developmental Services

Mar 13, 2026 - The department stated that its budget projections for 2026 ‑27 do not incorporate any potential added costs due to the changes in H.R 1. Will the department be able to determine whether its costs increase in the future due to H.R. 1?
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5157

The 2026-27 Budget: Medi-Cal Analysis

Mar 2, 2026 - One possible reason for our higher estimate is that our model reflects not only disenrollment among current enrollees, but also reduced enrollment flows over time and a persistent risk of disenrollment among eligible individuals due to added administrative burden.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5146

The 2025-26 Budget: Understanding Recent Increases in the Medi-Cal Senior Caseload

Mar 6, 2025 - Based on data available on the California Health and Human Services Agency (CalHHS) Open Data Portal, the increases have continued through at least December 2024 (the last month of data available as of publication of this report).
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5010

Building California’s Behavioral Health Infrastructure: Progress Update and Opportunities for the Proposition 1 Bond

Feb 5, 2025 - Limited data on facility capacity poses challenges for assessing awards made for most facility types. In one area where a robust needs assessment has been performed (inpatient mental health facilities), however, we found that a majority of new capacity is being added in four (out of ten) regions of the state estimated to have the least need.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4954

Considering Medi-Cal in the Midst of a Changing Fiscal and Policy Landscape

Oct 24, 2025 - …But Potentially With Added Complexity. Adding more flexibilities also could come with the potential downside of more complexity for beneficiaries and counties. For example, exempting high unemployment counties from work requirements could create more volatility.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5083

The 2025-26 Budget: CalAIM Enhanced Care Management and Community Supports Implementation Update

Mar 6, 2025 - The difficulty MCPs have in adding ECM and Community Supports providers may be keeping utilization rates lower than expected. Systemic Constraints Limit Utilization. Lower ‑than ‑expected utilization of certain benefits may be driven more by systemic constraints across different regions of the state rather than a low demand for those benefits.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5003

The 2026-27 Budget: Medi-Cal Fiscal Outlook

Nov 19, 2025 - The cost of services to this population, however, is difficult to track with existing data sources. Moreover, data generally are not readily available to estimate monthly caseloads and costs of other UIS populations.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5092

Mental Health Services Act: Revenue Volatility and the Governor’s Proposal to Reduce Allowable County Reserves

Jul 13, 2023 - In assessing the volatility of a data series, looking at the year-to-year changes in the data is important. When data show more variability in annual changes, they are said to be more volatile. One way to measure the variability in a data series is average deviation (AD).
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4780

An Update on the Public Health Laboratory System After the Pandemic

Jun 12, 2025 - During the COVID-19 pandemic, the state had difficulties managing the high volume of laboratory data associated with the pandemic and local public health laboratories did not have a consistent system to report COVID data.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5056

Mental Health Services Act: Impact of Governor's Proposal on Funding for Children and Youth

Aug 10, 2023 - We outline the methodological and data limitations with this data set in our post on the proposed MHSA category changes. Below, we outline the limitations specific to the data collected on county expenditures of children and youth mental health services.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4786