CW: Poverty
Julia Feinberg lives with spinal muscular atrophy. She works as a therapist in Oakland, California and relies on Medi-Cal to pay for in-home care 19 hours a day. After a decade of expansion, California is cutting Medi-Cal as part of broad federal and state cuts that experts estimate will remove coverage from more than 2.2 million Californians over the next four years, doubling the state’s uninsured rate.
The most recent cut occurred in June, when state leaders passed a budget lowering the asset limit for low-income seniors and disabled people qualifying for Medi-Cal to $21,000, beginning in July 2027. Because Feinberg has accumulated savings, she will need to spend approximately $10,000 to fall below the limit.
What that means is that Feinberg is being asked to make herself less financially secure in order to preserve the care that allows her to live independently. She can save for an emergency, but only up to a point. She can prepare for an uncertain future, but those preparations can eventually threaten her eligibility for the program she relies on every day.
For disabled people, savings can mean replacing equipment, making a home accessible, paying for transportation or surviving an unexpected expense. Disability does not eliminate the emergencies everyone else is encouraged to prepare for. It can make those emergencies far more expensive, which makes the expectation that disabled people remain poor enough to receive care especially painful.
California eliminated Medi-Cal asset limits in 2024 before bringing back a $130,000 limit. The budget passed in June lowered that limit again to $21,000. The shift means that disabled people who had begun building some measure of financial security may once again have to think about whether the money they save could eventually cost them their health care.
Elizabette Guéçamburu also lives with spinal muscular atrophy and is saving for a used wheelchair-accessible van that costs around $75,000. Accessible home modifications can cost tens of thousands more. Expenses like these are not luxuries for disabled people. They can determine whether someone can leave home, use a bathroom safely or continue living in a place that meets their needs.
California’s policy is part of a much larger problem. Across the country, Medicaid asset limits can still apply to older and disabled people. The exact limits vary by state, but the underlying contradiction is national: disabled people can depend on Medicaid for services that make independent life possible while facing rules that force them to live in poverty.
For example, in Illinois, Katie Vree who uses a wheelchair following a spinal cord injury, worked as a health care coordinator and saved for retirement while receiving assistance through the state’s Home Services Program. In 2023, she learned that her retirement account could cost her those benefits because it put her over the program’s financial limits.
At twenty-seven, I think about how differently adulthood can look when you depend on Medicaid and other programs. Many of my peers have spent their twenties working, saving, and slowly building more secure lives. I have spent my time learning how to navigate bureaucracy. I have received SSI since I was 16. I do not want poverty to be the price of support. I want what most people want from their twenties: the chance to build a life that becomes more secure with time, not less.
That creates an impossible contradiction. Disabled people are expected to plan responsibly for their futures while living within systems that can punish them for doing exactly that. Someone can need tens of thousands of dollars for an accessible vehicle while simultaneously being told that having a fraction of that amount in savings makes them too financially secure for assistance.
For Feinberg, Medi-Cal is not an abstract government program or simply another expense in California’s budget. It pays for roughly 19 hours of caregiving every day, care that allows her to live in her community and continue working as a therapist. Without that coverage, she has said she would be confined to a nursing home.
That reality can disappear when health care cuts are reduced to eligibility limits and numbers on a spreadsheet. The $21,000 limit represents far more than a amount for someone whose independence depends on remaining eligible for care. The approximately $10,000 Feinberg may have to spend represents security she deliberately built and may now have to surrender.
Disabled people should not have to drain their savings to demonstrate that they need help, nor should they be forced to choose between preparing for an emergency and protecting the care that makes their independence possible. A system meant to support disabled people should not require them to become more financially vulnerable before it will continue supporting them.
Source:
Hwang, Kristen. “Medi-Cal Cuts Could Push Seniors and People with Disabilities off of Coverage.” CalMatters, 23 Oct. 2026. https://calmatters.org/health/2026/10/california-medi-cal-asset-limit-cut/
Victory, Lauren. “Chicago Area Woman’s Disability Benefits at Risk Because She’s Saved for Retirement.” CBS News, 2 Oct. 2023, www.cbsnews.com/amp/chicago/news/woman-disability-benefits-risk/.