Backers of a bill that would have allowed terminally ill Californians to get lethal prescriptions to end their lives shelved the legislation Tuesday morning because they lacked the votes to move it out of a key committee.

The End of Life Option Act, had already cleared the state Senate, but faced opposition in the Assembly Health Committee.

Among those expected to vote against the bill were a group of southern California Democrats, almost all of whom are Latino, after the Archdiocese of Los Angeles increased its lobbying  efforts. Church officials argued that some poor residents could feel pressured into ending their lives prematurely if they couldn’t afford expensive medical treatment. Disability rights advocates have also fought against the legislation.

“We continue to work with Assembly members to ensure they are comfortable with the bill,” said a joint statement from Sens. Lois Wolk, D-Davis, and Bill Monning, D-Monterey, and Assemblywoman Susan Eggman, D-Stockton. “For dying Californians like Jennifer Glass, who was scheduled to testify today, this issue is urgent. We remain committed to passing the End of Life Option Act for all Californians who want and need the option of medical aid in dying.”

Under the bill, mentally competent adults who are terminally ill with less than six months to live could request lethal medication from a physician.

“We’re going to review our options,” Monning said in an interview later. “We walk away from the decision today knowing that we’re going to have to spend more time cultivating our colleagues in the Assembly.”

The aid-in-dying issue was brought home to Californians last year after 29-year-old resident Brittany Maynard moved to Oregon so she could get a lethal prescription under that state’s death with dignity law. Maynard was terminally ill with brain cancer and died last November. A video she recorded 19 days before she took life-ending drugs was shown at a Senate hearing in March.

Last month, a poll found that 69 percent of Californians and 70 percent of Latinos supported the bill. The poll was conducted by the advocacy group Compassion and Choices.

The bill also got a boost after the California Medical Association changed its stance from opposed to neutral.

It was modeled after a 1994 Oregon law that permits aid in dying. Four other states — Washington, Montana, Vermont and New Mexico — have similar laws.

This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, KQED and Kaiser Health News.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Women are saving a lot of money as a result of a health law requirement that insurance cover most forms of prescription contraceptives with no additional out-of-pocket costs, according to a study released Tuesday. But the amount of those savings and the speed with which those savings occurred surprised researchers.

The study, in the July issue of the policy journal Health Affairs, found that the average birth control pill user saved $255 in the year after the requirement took effect. The average user of an intrauterine device (IUD) saved $248. Those savings represented a significant percentage of average out-of-pocket costs.

“These are healthy women and this on average is their No. 1 need from the health care system,” said Nora Becker, an MD-PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania and lead author of the study. “On average, these women were spending about 30 to 44 percent of their total out of pocket (health) spending just on birth control.”

The study looked at out-of-pocket spending from nearly 800,000 women between the ages of 13 and 45 from January 2008 through June 2013. For most plans, the requirement began Aug. 1, 2012, or Jan. 1, 2013. So-called “grandfathered” health plans, those that have not substantially changed their benefits since the health law was passed in 2010, are exempt from the mandate, as are a small subset of religious-based plans.

Becker said that while making birth control substantially cheaper may not increase the number of women who use it, the new requirements could well shift the type of birth control they use to longer-acting, more effective methods like the IUD. “If prior to the ACA a woman was facing $10 to $30 a month for the pill but hundreds of dollars upfront for an IUD and now both are free, we might see a different choice,” she said.

Researchers also found that while out-of-pocket spending dropped dramatically for most types of prescription contraceptive methods — “the majority of women were paying nothing by June 2013” –spending barely budged for the vaginal ring or hormonal patch.

That could be because under the original rules, many insurers declined to make the ring or patch free, since, like pills, they are essentially hormone delivery methods.  Earlier this year, the Obama administration issued a clarification saying that while insurers do not have to offer every brand of every method, they do have to cover at least one product in each category, including rings and patches.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

ANAHEIM, Calif. — When Fabiola Ortiz heard California had granted health coverage to poor children lacking legal immigration status, she felt grateful. Since arriving in the U.S. illegally 12 years ago, she has taken her two youngest children to the doctor only for required school physicals and relied on home remedies for everything else.

“The truth is that we really need insurance,” the 46-year-old Anaheim resident said. “For the children, it will be a big help.”

The coverage under Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid, is expected to result in more preventive care and better long-term health for an estimated 170,000 children who have long relied on safety-net clinics and emergency rooms. But while many policymakers, advocates and researchers celebrated the budget deal announced by Gov. Jerry Brown last month, they also said the new coverage is limited because it doesn’t guarantee access to doctors and doesn’t include adults.

“This is an important investment,” said Claire D. Brindis, director of the University of California San Francisco’s Institute for Health Policy Studies. “But it is not the full solution.”

About 1.16 million low-income adults are in California illegally and ineligible for comprehensive Medi-Cal services, though they may qualify for pregnancy and emergency care. In many areas of the state, they can get county-based coverage, but it also is not comprehensive and can’t be used in other counties.

Orange County, where Ortiz lives, doesn’t offer such coverage. She wishes the state would allow her and her oldest son to sign up for Medi-Cal, too. He is 22 and has heart problems that have landed him in the emergency room about three times a year. She has to pay out-of-pocket for his regular visits to a cardiologist.

State Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Democrat from Bell Gardens, has proposed legislation that could extend Medi-Cal to low-income adults living in the state illegally, depending on available funding. The bill also requests a waiver from the federal government enabling higher-income immigrants to buy unsubsidized insurance through the state’s insurance marketplace.

In the meantime, Aracely Patchett, an administrator at Central City Community Health Center in Anaheim, where Ortiz gets care, said the new health coverage will enable her staff to refer the children to specialists. “Not being able to provide the care they deserve has been frustrating,” she said.

And Carmela Castellano-Garcia, president of the California Primary Care Association, said having the children covered will boost community health centers’ bottom line because many centers until now have been serving this population at a loss.

“These victories just fuel the fire continuing forward,” she said. “These incremental steps are very critical.”

Health researcher Laurel Lucia said she isn’t surprised that the state decided, for now, to cover children because there are fewer of them than adults and they are less costly. In addition, providing them with preventive care is a good long-term investment for the state, said Lucia, health care program manager at the University of California Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

Also, Lucia said, “there is more sympathy toward kids.”

The children’s insurance will only help health and immigration advocates in their fight to cover everyone, said Wendy Lazarus, co-president of The Children’s Partnership, a nonprofit child advocacy organization.

“It is a hugely important step forward for the state and something we can build on,” she said. “Momentum is really building in California to finish the job and cover all residents, regardless of age.”

Opponents said California shouldn’t force its citizens to pay for health care for people here illegally.

“We’re talking about transferring tens of millions of dollars from taxpayers–citizens and lawful permanent residents–to those who have flouted our nation’s immigration laws and are now laying claim to the property of others,” said John C. Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University in Orange.

Eastman said the magnet for illegal immigration was already large enough in California. “Governor Brown and the Democrats in the state legislature have now made that magnet even larger,” he said.

The children will enter a Medi-Cal system that has more than 12 million enrollees and is struggling to ensure access to care. About 2.3 million people have joined the Medi-Cal rolls since the beginning of 2014, when the Affordable Care Act took full effect. About half the children in the state are now on Medi-Cal.

The California State Auditor recently found that the state had failed to ensure that Californians in Medi-Cal managed care could find doctors. And last year, the auditors said that only half of children enrolled in Medi-Cal were receiving dental care. Their audit cited insufficient numbers of dentists in some areas due to low reimbursement rates.

Meanwhile, because immigrants living here illegally have long been excluded from coverage, getting them to sign up won’t necessarily be easy.

“We have a big challenge ahead of us to dispel the perception that undocumented people are forever left out,” said Daniel Zingale, senior vice president at The California Endowment, which has invested heavily in the campaign dubbed “Health for All” to cover all immigrants.

Zingale said community clinics, faith-based groups and the ethnic media will likely play a big role in educating families about the new coverage.

Experience has shown that even when immigrants living here illegally qualify for coverage, they may not apply. UC researchers found that many adults under 30 who were granted temporary legal status and became eligible for Medi-Cal were still likely to remain uninsured. That’s because they weren’t aware of their eligibility or were worried about the effect on relatives in the country without legal permission.

Jacqueline Curiel, a Santa Ana-based administrator for the AltaMed Health Services Corp. Community Health Center, said many people fear that enrolling their children in public programs could hurt the family’s chances of getting legal status. She said her staff has a tough job assuring patients that it won’t affect their immigration cases.

“There is a lot of distrust,” Curiel said.

Curiel said she is hopeful that the parents will soon be eligible for comprehensive Medi-Cal. But even if California’s policymakers don’t opt to cover adults, immigrant families are better off than in the past.

“We’ve made large strides,” she said.

Blue Shield of California Foundation helps fund KHN coverage in California.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.