Community members, health care workers, and local advocates gathered at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in Bakersfield on August 14, and discussed how upcoming federal budget changes could impact access to health care in Kern County and across the Central Valley.

The event featured two panels.

California’s 22nd Congressional District Community Panel included: Sandy Reding, RN, President, California Nurses Association, Precious Henley, IHSS Provider & UDW Member, Rosa Lopez, Senior Policy Advocate & Organizer/Deputy Advocacy Director, ACLU of Southern California, Melissa Cedillo, Campaign Organizer, Health Access California, Jesse Aguilar, Teacher, California Teachers Association Board of Directors, and Cecilia Rosas, Dolores Huerta Foundation. 

Elected leaders panel included: Jasmeet Bains, Assembly Member, CA District 25, Melissa Hurtado, State Senator, CA Senate District 16, Randy Villegas, Trustee, Visalia Unified School District, and Manpreet Kaur, Vice Mayor of Bakersfield. 

The speakers said some of the proposed changes could take effect as early as January 2026, with others expected in mid-2026 or later. Panelists also warned that reductions to Medicaid and other programs could lead to job losses, hospital closures, and decreased access to medical care particularly in rural communities.

California Teachers Association representative Jessie Aguilar said public schools could also be affected because Medicaid reimbursements help fund school-based health services, including mental health counseling, screenings, and support for students with disabilities. 

According to data shared at the meeting, Medicaid covers more than 316,000 residents in California’s 22nd Congressional District and more than 217,000 in the 20th Congressional District.

Rosa Lopez of the ACLU of Southern California said the cuts could also limit services that allow people with disabilities to live independently. 

She said that shifting funds toward immigration enforcement could affect Kern County’s large immigrant population, citing a January immigration operation that kept some children from attending school and hurt local businesses.

Cecilia Rosas, a Medi-Cal recipient and farmworker with the Dolores Huerta Foundation, shared how proposed cuts would devastate her life and others like her.

She explained that she often fears even going to work because she could lose income, face more expenses, and risk her health. “I’m a good person. I respect everyone. I’m not a bad person,” she said. “But I’m afraid to even go out and earn a living. With all these cuts, it’s really going to affect me.”

Cecilia said her struggles are personal; she has diabetes and worries what will happen if her healthcare access is reduced. “It really affects me because I’m living through this,” she said. “We need leaders who will look out for our needs, not just their own.”

During the elected officials’ panel, speakers described the proposal referred to as the “big ugly bill” as part of a decades-long push to cut and privatize Medicaid. 

They said the measure would shift billions in tax cuts to the wealthy and fund immigration enforcement by reducing health care access.

Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, said local and federal leaders have publicly opposed health care cuts but then supported budgets reducing public health funding. 

“We are sick and tired of people talking,” Bains said. “We need people that are gonna show up… I have been in that room fighting with everyone here from day one.”

State Senator Melissa Hurtado, who previously worked as an organizer with Health Access, said such attacks on Medicaid are “nothing new” and have been part of a national strategy for over a decade. 

She said that hospital closures such as the shuttering of Madera Community Hospital are linked to long-term funding cuts. Hurtado also outlined legislation she has introduced, including bills targeting algorithmic price fixing and holding private equity investors accountable for actions that lead to hospital closures.

Randy Villegas said that Republican-backed budget proposals would cut $880 billion from Medicaid and reduce funding for programs like SNAP and WIC. “For what? To give Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos another private island or a yacht?” he said.

Villegas pointed out that the health care system was already in crisis before the bill was introduced. “Two out of every three bankruptcies are tied to medical debt,” he said. “Every single year, over 66,000 people die because they don’t have health insurance, not because we couldn’t treat them, but because a system denied them care.”

He called for a shift to single-payer health care, saying, “Nobody should be profiting off your illness or your pain. We must fight for unapologetic Medicare for all, everybody in, nobody left out.”

Bakersfield Vice Mayor Manpreet Kaur spoke about how these issues affect local communities, sharing that her family’s access to healthcare came from her mother’s decades of work as a postal carrier. “Without that union job, I wouldn’t have grown up with healthcare,” Kaur said.

She said that the fight is personal for many Central Valley families, “What scares Republicans the most is that we’re in this room together. They don’t know what to do because their own voters rely on healthcare too.”