Nobody should lose their medication to a form they never opened.
We prepare communities for disaster. Most people picture a fire or a flood. But a household can be taken apart just as fast by a letter nobody opened and a benefit that quietly changed. On January 1, 2026, California reinstated asset limits for the Medi-Cal programs that serve older adults, and most people affected will not find out on January 1. They will find out at their renewal, when it is already in motion. Preparation is the whole defense, and preparation is what we do.
The date that matters is your renewal date, not January 1.
If you were already enrolled, nothing changed for you on January 1. The new limits apply at your first annual renewal in 2026, or sooner if you report a change in circumstances. That gap is why families get blindsided. Find your renewal month, and open every envelope from your county office and your health plan between now and then. An unopened renewal packet is the single most common way people lose coverage they still qualify for.
Why this is our work
A disaster does not always arrive as weather.
Bryant & Co. Foundation is a disaster preparedness and disaster relief organization. That is what we are. Everything else we do is an initiative underneath it. We showed up for the Los Angeles wildfires, and everything we have built since has been shaped by the same lesson: the damage that lasts is almost never the part that made the news. It is the paperwork nobody could face, the medication that ran out, the family that had no plan because no one told them they needed one.
The Living Ground
The nonprofit arm of a regenerative educational farm operating system. Food security, land stewardship, and hands on learning. A community that can feed itself and knows how to work its own ground is a community that survives the next disaster and recovers faster from it.
Community Health Resilience
This work. Helping older adults and the people who love them see a benefits change coming while there is still time to act on it. Same preparedness discipline, pointed at a disaster that arrives by mail.
Prevention beats response
Relief work teaches you fast that almost everything you scramble to fix afterward could have been smaller, cheaper, and less painful with information delivered earlier. That is the entire premise of this page.
What actually changed
Four things that took effect January 1, 2026.
From 2024 through 2025, California suspended the asset test entirely for these programs. That window closed. Here is what replaced it.
Asset limit is back
For one person. $195,000 for a couple, plus $65,000 for each additional household member. This applies to non-expansion programs: Aged, Blind and Disabled, Medi-Cal with a Share of Cost, Long-Term Care, Medicare Savings Programs, and the 250% Working Disabled Program.
What does not count
Your home. One vehicle. Household goods and personal belongings. Retirement accounts. A lot of families assume they are over the limit when the things they actually own are exempt.
Look-back period returned
For nursing home Medi-Cal, asset transfers made below fair market value on or after January 1, 2026 are subject to penalty review. Do not give away or sell property cheaply to a family member without getting advice first.
Assets get reported
New applicants report assets now. If you are already enrolled, you report at your next annual renewal after January 1, 2026. Watch your mail for that packet.
The number that shocks people
How a Share of Cost actually gets calculated.
Families are often stunned by a monthly Share of Cost in the thousands and assume it is a mistake or a punishment. It is neither. It is a formula, and once you can see the formula you can see whether yours is right, and whether it can be lowered.
California subtracts a Maintenance Need Allowance from your countable monthly income. In 2026 that allowance is $600 for an individual and $934 for a couple. Whatever is left over is your Share of Cost. You pay that amount toward medical costs in a month before Medi-Cal begins covering the rest.
Whatever you have above the allowance becomes your Share of Cost. This is why a modest pension can produce a very large number.
This is an illustration of the formula, not a determination of your benefits. Real calculations include income disregards and deductions that can lower the result, and only your county office can tell you your actual figure. Use this to know what questions to ask, then call HICAP for free help reviewing it.
How the Share of Cost formula scales with income for a single person in 2026, using the $600 Maintenance Need Allowance. The point is not any single number. It is that the amount rises dollar for dollar with income above the allowance, which is why two neighbors with similar lives can get very different letters.
Do these now
Six things worth doing this month.
Tap each one as you finish it. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere, this is just a way to keep your place.
Free, unbiased, and not selling anything
Where to get real help.
We prepare communities for disaster. We are not a benefits agency, and we do not decide anyone's eligibility. These are the people whose actual job that is, and none of them charge you or sell you a policy.
HICAP
1-800-434-0222Health Insurance Counseling and Advocacy Program. Free one-on-one counseling from counselors registered by the California Department of Aging. They will review your paperwork with you. They do not sell insurance and they do not make decisions for you. Counselors in every county.
aging.ca.gov/hicapMedicare
1-800-633-42271-800-MEDICARE, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For general Medicare questions, coverage checks, and replacing a lost card.
medicare.govAppeal a decision
1-800-743-8525You have the right to a State Fair Hearing if your eligibility or your Share of Cost is decided in a way you believe is wrong. There are filing deadlines, so call as soon as you get a notice you disagree with rather than waiting to see what happens.
Prescriptions
1-800-977-2273Medi-Cal Rx Customer Service. If a pharmacy tells you a medication is no longer covered or the cost has changed, call before you walk away without it.
Community care
The most useful thing you can do is knock on a door.
Every part of our work starts from the same idea: the person next to you is the infrastructure. This is no different.
Open the mail together
Official looking envelopes get set aside to deal with later, and later becomes never. Offer to sit down and go through health plan and county mail with someone. That one hour is the whole intervention.
Ask one question
"Do you know what month your Medi-Cal renews?" Most people do not. Helping someone find that date and write it on a calendar is enough to change the outcome.
Make the call with them, not for them
HICAP will talk to the beneficiary. Sit beside them, take notes, and let them answer. It keeps their authority intact, which matters more than convenience.
Bring it to the Cool Bus
Our mobile program already meets people where they are. Printed copies of this guide ride along with the seeds. If you host a gathering spot, tell us and we will bring stacks.
All hands on deck
And if you have the time, we could use your hands.
This page is here to protect you. This part is an invitation. The people being told they are a line item are the same people who know how to grow food, put up preserves, fix what is broken, and teach a child to be patient with a seed. We are building something that needs exactly that, and there is no age limit on it.
Teach what you know
Canning, seed saving, grafting, sewing, carpentry, engine repair. Skills that were ordinary in your childhood are close to lost. Come show a young person.
Grow with us
Grow bags, raised beds, and seated work. You do not have to bend over a row to be part of a harvest.
Mentor
Our Junior Board is full of people in their twenties building something serious. What they need most is someone who has already seen a few decades go by.
Tell your story
We document everything we build. If you have lived through something worth recording, we want it in the archive while you are here to tell it yourself.
About this page. Bryant & Co. Foundation is a 501(c)(3) disaster preparedness and disaster relief nonprofit. Our initiatives include The Living Ground, the nonprofit arm of a regenerative educational farm operating system, and this community health resilience work. We publish this as preparedness information for the communities we serve. It is not legal advice, benefits advice, or a determination of your eligibility, and we are not affiliated with any government agency, health plan, or insurer. Program rules change and individual circumstances vary widely. Please confirm anything here with your county office, with HICAP, or with a licensed professional before acting on it. We take no position on any legislation, party, or candidate.