The Brief

After earning a bachelor’s degree in art history five years ago, Erin Aguilar struggled to establish a career in the art world — or even secure an internship.

“Nothing was happening,” she said. “It was kind of disheartening.”

At a community arts center in Boyle Heights about two years ago, she spotted a pamphlet for a museum studies program at East Los Angeles College; she signed up. Now Aguilar is close to completing her coursework at ELAC, and she's an intern at the Getty, one of L.A.'s most prominent arts institutions.

ELAC’s Museum Studies Certificate Program consists of coursework in art history, library science, anthropology, and studio art. And, perhaps most importantly, the program guarantees an internship — a big deal in a competitive industry.

Exposure to new career options

Art history professor Surana Singh created the program with her colleagues at ELAC and at the Vincent Price Art Museum, which is housed on campus. They wanted to expose students to a broad range of career options.

ELAC launched the program during the pandemic. Some courses continue to be offered online, but about half of them are in person.

Dr. Surana Singh co-developed the museum studies program and teaches its capstone course.

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When they look to the future, Singh said, art history students often envision museum and gallery curators, who, among other duties, oversee how art and artifacts are selected and displayed. Curators are important, she added, but there are many other roles that might be a better fit.

“Our goal is for students to find what their interest is through the readings, through the lectures, and then through the internship experience,” she said. “Maybe someone interns in a curatorial practice, and then they realize: ‘Oh! curation’s not for me’ — but they learn that within this environment, and then they can take that with them.”

Such was the case for Aguilar. When she first enrolled in the program, she was set on becoming a curator. Now that she’s been exposed to other career options, Aguilar has found that she’s more interested in archival and conservation work. “We don’t all need to be curators,” she said.

A chance to explore

Many students in the program already have bachelor’s degrees, but not the career they envisioned.

ELAC student Jessica Ardon.

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ELAC student Erin Aguilar.

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Sara Castro, who earned her bachelor's in history at Grinnell College in Iowa, also applied to ELAC following a frustrating experience in the art world.

To get her foot in the door, Castro worked in visitor services at a mid-size museum for about two years. But when she was ready to move forward, she hit a wall.

“It's so hard [to move up] in museums, unless you have a master's or Ph.D. or, like, eight years of work experience,” she said.

For her internship, Sara Castro worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Come fall, she will begin a master’s program in cultural studies at Claremont Graduate University.

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But before investing in graduate school, Castro wanted more information. “I just wanted to have the space to explore and learn about the different areas in museums,” she said.

ELAC enabled her to do that. In January, Castro was an intern in the National Gallery of Art's interpretation department. The internship covered her airfare and lodging. She also received two stipends, one for daily expenses and another for winter clothes. To help her and her fellow interns get settled, two Vincent Price Art Museum staff members also went along.

Some of her classmates are skilled artists. Others are “more like me,” she said. “[We] were, like: ‘How do you make art? What is it?’ That was really fun. It kind of got me out of my comfort zone, [and it] gave me a good perspective.”

In depth with cultural studies

While students complete their internships, they’re also required to take a lab on campus. Singh’s capstone class meets every Friday on the third floor of the Vincent Price Art Museum. She and her students gather in the “Museum Learning Lab,” a room teeming with art books — everything from Kehinde Wiley to Richard Avedon to 1,000 Chairs. The course gives students time and space to reflect on their internships, and on how museums shape our views.

Singh and her students leave no issue unturned. Their conversations encompass everything from didactics (the labels that accompany art and artifacts) to museum hours.

Grounded in cultural studies — an interdisciplinary field that examines how culture is created, shared, and maintained — Singh’s capstone course pushes students to examine structures of power and how they’re reproduced. This includes conversations about who gets to be in museum leadership and how communities are represented. They also discuss the historical role of museums, how they can be problematic, and how they can be transformed.

Professor Singh with students in the capstone course. These students are currently interns at the Getty Villa, LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, and other institutions.

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Located on campus, the Vincent Price Art Museum has permanent collection of fine art.

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When Jessica Ardon, a Cal State Northridge graduate, was comparing different museum studies programs, this perspective drew her in. ELAC’s program, she said, delves deep into questions like: “How do you make a museum more inclusive?” and, “How do we mend wounds with people who've been excluded from these spaces?”

“I wanted to be part of that,” she said.

Ardon is also an intern at the Getty Villa. On a Friday morning earlier this month, she paired up for class discussion with a student who interns at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown L.A. Their conversation was grounded in an assigned TED Talk titled “We Must Decolonize Our Museum,” which encourages museum professionals to craft exhibitions alongside the communities they aim to represent — instead of bringing them on as consultants just as an afterthought. From there, Ardon and her classmate went on to discuss the ethics of exhibiting human remains; the implications of having a 16th-century Aztec headdress on display at a museum in Austria; and a book called Whitewalling: Art, Race & Protest in 3 Acts.

Building an enduring network

Singh’s capstone course also coaches students, so they can get the most out of their internships. At their respective work sites, all students are assigned a mentor. They help students craft résumés and cover letters. They also provide job interview tips and advice on how to build a career in the art world.

For Ardon, this part of the program has been especially helpful. Looking back on another internship, she regrets not taking a more proactive role in her learning. But, she added, it also helps that the mentors she and her classmates have been assigned are wholly committed to the experience. “They’re very much on top of it,” she said.

On top of sharing practical skills, Ardon said her mentor is always checking in. And if there’s someone at the Getty she’s too shy to approach, her mentor is happy to make an introduction.

For alumna Cicely Beltran, the professional relationships cultivated at ELAC have been longlasting. The museum studies program helped draw her back to the college after she quit over a decade before to raise her family.

ELAC alumna Cicely Beltran.

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Growing up, Beltran walked past this David Botello mural almost every day. It's one of the many community art pieces that sparked her interest in art.

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She continues to be in conversation with her former professors as she pursues a bachelor’s degree in art education at Cal State Long Beach. She’s also developed a strong bond with her colleagues at the Vincent Price Art Museum, where she works part-time as a guide. When she goes in for work, she said, “it does not feel like I'm going to a workplace . . . I'm going to a place with a real sense of community.”

Perhaps most significantly, the museum studies program helped Beltran reshape her own narrative, after so many years away from the classroom.

In her professor’s view, there was no gap in Beltran’s educational journey. Singh helped her see that “the whole time I was at home, raising my son, I was still researching art, writing about art, thinking about art, making art.”

“It was super validating,” Beltran said. “It made me feel like I hadn’t wasted all those years.”

Joseph Babbitt of Springfield, Mo. has a pretty good deal when it comes to health insurance. He works as a senior financial controller for West Plains Veterinary Supply, which employs about 50 people and distributes pet food, toys and vet supplies across the region.

Like about 157 million Americans, Babbitt gets insurance through his job. Unlike most Americans, his job has exceptionally generous benefits. "Our owners are very nice — they give all of our employees healthcare and they pay for it," he says. The company offers several different plan options and covers most or all of the monthly premium cost.

So why, even with free premiums, does it still feel like health costs are way too expensive? "Everybody talks about healthcare and how much it's costing them," says Babbitt. He explains that even without monthly premiums, a high deductible can be brutal — that's the amount the patient has to spend out-of-pocket before the insurance company starts paying for doctors visits and procedures, etc.

Now age 60, he remembers a time when it wasn't so bad. "Back in the '90s, our deductibles were $250 [or] $500 — now they're $5,000," he says. "That seems like a lot."

"We are the only country on our planet that forces people into bankruptcy because they get sick," he adds.

The cost of a new car, every year

Healthcare costs are rising fast in the U.S., and even workers with solid healthcare benefits through work are feeling it, according to an annual survey of nearly 2,000 employers about their health benefits. The report was published Thursday by KFF, a nonpartisan health research organization.

"The average health insurance premium for a family of four is now $28,000, which is just a ton of money," says Matthew Rae, associate director for the Health Care Marketplace Program at KFF. "It's basically the cost of a new car every year just to keep a family of four insured." Of that total for family premiums, workers pay about $7,000 per year on average and employers pay the rest.

A glimmer of positivity is that the costs for plans isn't growing as fast as it has in years past, he explains. "We're seeing a 5% increase in family health insurance premiums, which continues a period of modest growth," he says. That increase is roughly on par with worker wages and inflation.

However, "a 5% increase on a big number is still a lot of money," Rae points out. Plus, the growth for the portion of the premium costs that workers pay was 9%. "If this is the beginning of a shift of costs onto workers, that would be a big deal in terms of affordability," he says.

"We are asking people to chip in a lot of money," Rae adds. "Many people are committing a big chunk of their income to health insurance."

The uninsured rate is rising 

Another report published Thursday demonstrates the way these high costs affect people's health. The survey, conducted every two years by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit foundation that supports independent research, is entitled "The State of Health Insurance Coverage in 2026."

Even for workers fortunate enough to have health benefits, "about 43% of them said that they didn't get healthcare because of cost over the past year, and about 31% reported that they had medical debt," says Sara Collins, lead author of the report.

Another key finding was that the overall uninsured rate rose in the last two years. Collins says that's significant but not surprising, because of federal policy decisions like letting extra federal subsidies for people enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans expire, and people losing Medicaid after the pandemic emergency ended.

Federal data shows millions of people have lost health coverage already from either Medicaid or the ACA marketplaces. When work requirements take effect next year, millions more people are projected to lose Medicaid.

"There is a, I think, a strong feeling across the country that something probably does need to be done to the situation that people are facing in their health and health insurance — both on the cost side and then also on these coverage losses," Collins says.

"We asked people whether the federal government has a responsibility to ensure that all Americans have coverage and nearly three quarters said yes to that — that included about 45% of Republicans, 93% of Democrats and 76% of independents."

Copyright 2026 NPR

Mike Obedoza’s Lumpia Smash Burger begins with the flavorful marinade his mother uses for making lumpia, a crispy Filipino spring roll. He folds it into a beef patty, then tops it with a fried lumpia wrapper, creamy avocado slices and fresh jalapeño.

For Obedoza, who grew up in Carson as the son of Filipino immigrants and now resides in Tustin, the burger is more than a winning recipe. “This is me on a plate,” he said.

Fresh off back-to-back Best Burger wins at the Old Towne Burger Fest in Orange County, Obedoza has landed a residency at Grand Central Market in downtown L.A. as Banger Lumpia.

He attributes his current success to the broader Filipino American food moment happening in Southern California, from Lord Maynard Llera of Kuya Lord winning Best Chef: California at the 2024 James Beard Awards to other Filipino food business upstarts' local success, including San & Wolves in Long Beach.

Mike Obedoza works the griddle, making Filipino-American Smashburger dreams come true.

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“I’m one component of a whole movement that’s happening right now,” he said.

His residency closes this weekend as part of Filipino American History Month, capping off a whirlwind couple of months Obedoza doesn’t take for granted, especially the love he's received from his own community.

“We get a lot of Filipinos that pass by us glowing. … They’re stoked that there’s some Filipino representation,” he said.

Building the burger

Before Banger Lumpia, Obedoza’s pop-up was called Banger, and he folded Filipino flavors like sisig into tacos. Once customers learned the food was Filipino, they kept asking for the classics. “Where’s the lumpia? Where’s the pancit?” he recalled.

Since lumpia filling is marinated ground meat, a burger felt like the natural next step. Obedoza took the marinade from his mother’s lumpia recipe (onions, carrots, soy sauce and fish sauce) and worked it into an all-beef smash patty.

Back-to-back wins: Obedoza’s Lumpia Smashburger took home Best Burger at the Old Towne Burger Fest in 2025 and 2026.

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Jalapeño and avocado add a California finish. “It’s like this perfect blend of being Filipino and Californian,” Obedoza said.

The idea has deep roots in Southern California. Obedoza points to Kogi, the Korean taco truck Roy Choi launched in L.A., which Choi said drew on a kind of local terroir. “I don’t see mustard plants and sheep grazing,” Choi said in a 2014 CNN segment with Anthony Bourdain. “I see barbed wire and telephone poles.”

“It’s a representation of the soil we were raised in," Obedoza said. “I think the Lumpia Smash burger is just my version of that.”

From skater to chef

Growing up in Carson, Obedoza found his creative outlet in rollerblading, competing and filming for sponsors. His favorite skater was Jon Julio, a Filipino American legend of the sport. “That was big for someone, a Filipino growing up in America,” Obedoza said. “I can’t think of anyone else at that time that was a representation of that.”

Obedoza studied hotel and restaurant management at Cal Poly Pomona, where a broken ankle from a skate competition pushed him to get serious about cooking. After graduating in 2007, he completed an accelerated program at the Culinary Institute of America in Greystone in St. Helena. Then, in 2008, he took a trip to the Philippines with his dad that reshaped how he saw himself.

From the skate park to the griddle, Banger Lumpia’s Mike Obedoza puts his whole self on the plate.

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“In the States, I’m Filipino. But when I go there, I’m American,” he said.

Back home, he cooked at hotels including Hyatt and Terranea Resort before moving into marketing and e-commerce. In 2022, he started serving tacos at skate parks under the name Banger. He went full-time in 2023 and has been popping up in L.A. and O.C. ever since.

That same cultural tension carries over into his food. While his Lumpia Smash burger has won praise, Obedoza says some Filipino customers pick apart the more traditional dishes on his menu: the lumpia isn’t made right, they say, the dipping sauce and adobo need more sugar, the adobo isn’t dark enough or has no bone.

“I guess I win on the burgers, but I’ll never win on being Filipino enough,” he said.

He said his cooking reflects his parents’ style and their home region of Central Luzon, north of Manila on the Philippines’ largest island. If it doesn’t match what someone grew up with, he says to get it from their own family.

Despite those differences, Obedoza says that lumpia is “the gateway drug to Filipino food” and hopes that his customers will feel emboldened to try the rest of the menu. He sees the Grand Central Market residency as a test run for an eventual brick-and-mortar. Whatever comes next, he credits one choice: “I went all in on being unique.”

Julia Feinberg feels like she’s living in a sinister version of Groundhog Day. For the second year in a row, California lawmakers have made it tougher for seniors and people with disabilities to qualify for state-funded health benefits.

Feinberg, 37, who has a degenerative neuromuscular disorder, said without Medi-Cal she would be confined to a nursing home rather than living and working as a therapist in Oakland.

“We keep having to have the same fight over and over and over again,” Feinberg said. She requires a power wheelchair and about 19 hours of caregiving each day, which Medi-Cal covers.

California is cutting Medi-Cal after a decade of expansion, part of sweeping federal and state cuts that experts estimate will kick more than 2.2 million Californians off coverage in the next four years, doubling the state’s uninsured rate.

The latest cut came in June, when state leaders approved a budget that will lower the asset limit for low-income seniors and people with disabilities to $21,000 to qualify for Medi-Cal, starting in July 2027. Feinberg, who has built up emergency savings, will have to spend about $10,000 to get under the cap.

In 2024, the state eliminated longstanding Medi-Cal asset limits, but since then lawmakers have chipped away at that policy. At the beginning of this year, state leaders reinstated an asset limit of $130,000, and the June budget lowered it further.

A primary residence and one vehicle are exempt from the new limit, but people 65 and older as well as those with disabilities cannot own a second home or car, and they can’t have more than $21,000 in savings accounts, certain retirement accounts, life insurance policies or even burial plots. They must still meet Medi-Cal income eligibility limits of about $1,800 a month for a single person.

Advocates say the rules unfairly target older people and those with disabilities.

“It’s really expensive to be disabled,” said Elizabette Guéçamburu, 44, who like Feinberg has spinal muscular atrophy and requires a power wheelchair as well as daily caregiving.

Guéçamburu said she’s saving up for a used wheelchair-accessible van, which costs about $75,000. Home modifications such as adding ramps and making bathrooms accessible also cost tens of thousands of dollars, none of which are covered by Medi-Cal. Guéçamburu said those expenses would be impossible to afford if she couldn’t save.

Guéçamburu lives on her family’s farm in Patterson where they grow walnuts, almonds and alfalfa. She works part time as the farm’s bookkeeper. In 2024, doctors diagnosed Guéçamburu’s father with prostate cancer, and he could no longer act as her caregiver. The same year, California eliminated asset limits for people with disabilities and seniors — Guéçamburu cried, able to qualify for Medi-Cal for the first time.

“The timing was a godsend,” she said.

Now, her aging father is unable to take care of her should she lose Medi-Cal, and Guéçamburu is struggling to figure out what to do with money left to her by her grandmother. She’ll likely have to put it into a special needs trust controlled by a family member and give up financial independence. She also had her family strike her from inheriting any portion of their 100-year-old farm. Private home care costs thousands of dollars a month, making it hard for lower- and middle-income people to pay for it out-of-pocket.

“I have to surrender our legacy just to have medical security and have the ability to live my life,” Guéçamburu said.

Asset limit flip-flop

Gov. Gavin Newsom eliminated Medi-Cal asset requirements in 2024 after a yearslong campaign by senior and disability rights advocates. In a statement before the elimination, Newsom said he was proud of the “bold investments” his administration was making to “protect life savings and homes.”

But two years later, faced with a $12 billion budget shortfall, Newsom proposed reinstating the former $2,000 limit, arguing that more than twice as many people enrolled as previously estimated. The Legislature opposed that proposal and compromised at the current higher limit of $130,000, lowering it again to $21,000 starting next July.

Lindsay Imai Hong, California director for Hand In Hand, an advocacy group supporting families that need caregiving, said organizers are looking to the next governor for change.

“We would love to see the asset test permanently taken off of the chopping block,” Imai Hong said.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton said in a statement to CalMatters that he opposes asset limits. He criticized the state for extending other Medi-Cal benefits beyond what it could afford, including coverage for immigrants without legal status.

“Seniors and people with disabilities shouldn’t lose their coverage because they’ve managed to save some money. They’ve done the responsible thing. Why punish them for it?” he said.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate and front-runner Xavier Becerra did not answer specific questions about the asset limit policy, but a campaign spokesperson blamed the Trump administration’s federal cuts for “squeezing” California’s Medi-Cal program.

Becerra will be “focused on protecting access to care and demand savings that are real, measurable and sustainable,” spokesperson Johnathan Underland said. On the campaign trail, Becerra has called himself California’s next “healthcare governor” and has previously floated raising taxes to reverse Medi-Cal cuts, but has not released detailed health policy plans.

Camille Nguyen, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, said most people who struggle to stay under the limit have little financial security.

“They have all of their life savings in cash savings instead of a house. That's their retirement. That is the amount they are expecting to live off of for the rest of their life,” Nguyen said.

State data shows about 600 people lost Medi-Cal when California reinstated the $130,000 limit. Advocates expect many more to lose Medi-Cal at the lower limit, but the state never released budget estimates before lawmakers approved the $21,000 limit. If the state reinstated the much lower $2,000 limit, the Department of Finance estimated 62,000 seniors and people with disabilities would lose Medi-Cal over two years.

Limit fuels anxiety, anger among people with disabilities

Feinberg said the prospect of losing Medi-Cal is especially scary because she would also lose access to a special disability program that pays for extra caregiving hours and has a multiyear waitlist. Caregivers help Feinberg get in and out of bed, dress and prepare her meals.

Before the limit was erased in 2024, Feinberg said she checked her bank account every day to make sure the balance was low. At the time, Feinberg was a graduate student and did not earn very much money. Now, as a licensed therapist Feinberg has been able to squirrel away some money.

“I don’t want to spend down that money. I want to save that for retirement, maybe buying a house in the future,” Feinberg said. “The prospect of not being able to have a nest egg is very unsettling.”

Guéçamburu said she’s angry and frustrated that the state views services for people with disabilities as expendable.

“It’s exhausting to have to justify your existence every legislative cycle,” she said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.