Summary:

The COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted significant stresses on the physical, emotional, and financial well-being of California’s residents, especially the seven million Californians — approximately 18% of the state’s residents — living in poverty.

CHCF partnered with NORC, a national research organization, to conduct a statewide survey of the health care experiences of California’s residents, age 18 to 64, who had received health care since March 2019. The survey included an oversampling of residents with low incomes.

The survey, conducted in the summer of 2020, asked respondents about their health care concerns, experiences, and access before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as about their experiences with racial discrimination and the impact of the pandemic on employment and insurance coverage. This initial report highlights a collection of key findings from the survey, focusing on health care access, mental health, telehealth experiences, pandemic-related stresses, and experiences with racial discrimination. Findings are presented for respondents with low incomes (defined as below 200% of the federal poverty level) compared to respondents with higher incomes (defined as 200% FPL or higher) whenever sample sizes are sufficient to allow this comparison. In cases where there is an insufficient sample size, overall findings are presented.

The initial report, as well as a zipped file of all of the charts from the report, is available for download below.

The full report, to be released in early 2021, will detail complete findings on respondents’ experiences with health and health care since the pandemic, including analyses of differences by a variety of demographics (including additional analyses by income, race, ethnicity, and insurance coverage and new analyses by region, gender, and language) as well as cross-tabular analysis of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on respondents.

Read the report >>