Bill Tracker

Amends California’s law governing mandated reporters of elder and dependent adult financial abuse. Requires financial institutions to anually train staff on escalating and reporting situations of suspected financial abuse. Requires frontline workers to file a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) regarding reasonably suspected financial abuse.

Potential impact: Spread awareness of reporting mechanisms applicable to fraud. Immediate reporting to IC3 increases the likelihood that the FBI can seize fraudulently transferred funds. Still, the FBI’s ability to recover funds is low.

The Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) is a specialized healthcare plan for eligible older adults. Medi-Cal beneficiaries do not pay a premium for PACE because the Medi-Cal covers the premium. This bill would require the state, which administers Medi-Cal, to negotiate with individual PACE program providers before setting a capitation rate, i.e., the fixed rate paid to the program by the state per year.

Potential impact: PACE providers would have a more individualized payment that may increase or decrease the amount of payments currently given by California.

Increases the amount Medi-Cal pays to dentists who travel to a beneficiary’s home or extended care facility. The payment would be a minimum of $120 per patient per visit and would increase with inflation every two years.

Potential impact: Higher Medi-Cal payments mean higher costs to the state. However, higher payments also could incentivize dentists to travel to home- or facility-bound patients, increasing access to dentistry and providing preventative care that could minimize costs overall by decreasing the number of severe dental cases ending up in the emergency department.

California law has several types of restraining orders. This bill allows parties, witnesses, and support people to appear remotely at hearings at no charge in Workplace Violence Restraining Order cases and Private Postsecondary School Violence Restraining Order cases. (The same rule already exists for other cases like Elder Abuse Restraining Orders.)

The bill also targets abusers who have a restraining order against them. These people, called “respondents”, usually cannot own a firearm. The bill clarifies that respondents also cannot own ammunition and requires courts to investigate whether an abuser has a firearm before the court issues, renews, modifies, or terminates a restraining order.

Finally, the bill would “encourage” court self-help centers and other restraining order service providers to tell people who want a restraining order that they can appear remotely at the hearing.

Potential impact: By increasing the types of cases in which people can appear remotely at hearings, the bill increases access to the courts. However, merely encouraging self-help centers to tell people that they can appear remotely does not change the status quo. Encouragement is a suggestion; no more. The bill also likely enhances the safety of people facing abuse by expanding prohibitions against dangerous weapons.

California law requires certain buildings to have an automated external difibrillator (AED) on the premises. This bill would add senior centers with a capacity of over fifty people to that list. The bill also requires training staff on how to use an AED and mostly immunizes senior centers and their employees from civil liability for causing an injury by using or not using an AED. Such immunity does not apply when an employee intentionally misuses (or refuses to use) an AED or is otherwise grossly negligent.

Potential impact: AEDs can give people an electric shock to restart their heart after it stops. The American Heart Association found in April 2025 that AEDs are used only 4% of the time when a person’s heart stops outside of the hospital. The bill follows some of the Association’s recommendations by increasing access to AEDs, training people on how to use AEDs, and creating clear liability protections (liability shields encourage well-meaning people to act in emergency situations by making them less afraid to do so). Thus, the bill would probably increase the usage of AEDs and save lives. As an example, the Association cites San Diego’s Project Heart Beat, under which San Diego has seen 10,000 AEDs distributed and 208 lives saved since it began in 2001.

In limited cases, veterans with a disability can exclude up to $100,000 of value from the price of their home for property tax valuations. This amount increases to $150,000 eligible veterans with a household income of under $40,000. In reality the dollar amounts are higher because of inflation adjustments. For example, in 2026, the $100,000 amount had risen to $180,671. The $150,000 and $40,000 amounts had increased to $271,009 and $81,131, respectively.

S.B. 888 would make it so that from 2026 to 2036, an eligible veteran’s income does not include disability payments related to their military service.

Potential impact: Public data on the number of people who claim the “disabled veterans’ exemption” does not appear widely available. Regardless, the bill should expand access to the exemption, saving more eligible veterans a bit of money in taxes.

The amount saved is not staggering. At a 0.95% tax rate, the income-limited group’s savings is $2,498.03, only $832.70 more than the unlimited income group. At the higher 1.25% rate, the income limited group saves $3,286.88 ($1,095.66 more than the unlimited income group). On the other hand, the bill recognizes the argument that a veteran’s disability payments should not disqualify them from another benefit based on the same disability. The bill also potentially dampens the exemption’s cliff effect—eligible veterans who earn just one dollar more than the income limit suddenly face a ~$1,000 property tax hike.

Contact your county assessor for questions about property tax exemptions.

Requires health insurance plans to cover treatments and medications for dementia, including Alzheimer’s. The treatment or medication must be medically necessary and FDA-approved. The bill also stops health insurers from specific cost-saving measures, like specifying a sequence in which medications have to be given or prolonging the authorization process for a treatment. Insurers further cannot add eligibility criteria on top of the FDA’s own criteria and must cover outpatient care for treatment options that are otherwise covered and are not self-administered.

Potential impact: The bill overall expands healthcare access to dementia patients. Health insurers often seek to lower their costs by prescribing less expensive drugs or treatments first before authorizing more expensive (and more effective) drugs or treatments. Certain types of dementia escalate very quickly, though. Dementia patients thus lack time to go through barriers imposed by insurance. S.B. 950 lowers those time barriers.

The bill should also lower access barriers. One such barrier the bill targets appears when healthcare plans impose extra conditions (not required by the FDA) on patients to qualify for treatment. Another barrier involves requiring inpatient services. Requiring these services decreases the number of options available to dementia patients, especially if they live in a rural area that lacks access to many healthcare facilities. The bill tackles that by forcing insurers to also offer outpatient options.

Visit Alzheimer’s San Diego to learn more about dementia.

Authorizes local health departments to make education programs for older adults. Such a program must include communal meals and instruction on topics like digital literacy, fall prevention, nutrition, healthcare, emergency preparedness, and civic engagement.

Potential impact: Ultimately, the bill sounds positive but likely does little. It does not provide funding for education programs and does not require such programs. The bill also does not appear to add to what local health departments already do. San Diego County, for instance, offers education on dementia and elder abuse, a fall prevention guide, a Feeling Fit Club, Tai Chi classes, and more. Imperial County’s Area Plan on Aging similarly emphasizes education heavily. Elder Law & Advocacy has a Health Insurance Counseling & Advocacy Program to educate Medicare beneficiaries in San Diego and Imperial County on their healthcare options, and similar programs exist throughout the state.

Finally, the bill makes clear that nothing requires a school district partnering with a local health department to “divert funding from other adult education or elementary and secondary education programs” to contribute to an older adult education program. Even if a school district wants to, though, it is not clear what funds they could use for that purpose.

Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly (RCFEs) are a type of long-term care option for older adults in California. The California Department of Social Services (DSS) regulates and inspects RCFEs for compliance with California law. Part of that regulation includes holding RCFEs accountable for abuse.

S.B. 991 requires DSS to categorize substantiated instances of abuse by the type of abuse involved, which includes physical abuse, financial abuse, isolation, mental abuse, etc.

Potential impact: Although the bill will not impact RCFE residents personally, it improves data collection by increasing the specificity of DSS reports. With better data in hand, the state will hopefully be able to allocate resources or legislate changes to target the forms of abuse that happen most often in RCFEs.