Healthcare coverage: minimum essential coverage – This bill would create the Minimum Essential Coverage Individual Mandate to require a California resident to ensure that the resident, and any dependent of the resident, is covered under minimum essential coverage, as defined, for each month beginning on January 1, 2020, except as specified. The bill would require the Exchange to grant exemptions from the mandate for reason of hardship or religious conscience, and would require the Exchange to establish a process for determining eligibility for an exemption. The bill would impose the Individual Shared Responsibility Penalty for the failure to maintain minimum essential coverage, as determined and collected by the Franchise Tax Board, in collaboration with the Exchange, as specified. The bill would require the Franchise Tax Board to provide specified information to the Exchange regarding individuals who do not maintain minimum essential coverage, and would require the Exchange to conduct annual outreach and enrollment efforts with those individuals. The bill would require an applicable entity, as defined, that provides minimum essential coverage to an individual to file specified returns to the Franchise Tax Board regarding that coverage, as prescribed. The bill would also expand the purposes of the California Health Trust Fund to include the Exchange’s operational costs of the Minimum Essential Coverage Individual Mandate and the Affordable Care Access Plus Program. By expanding the purposes of a continuously appropriated fund, the bill would make an appropriation. This bill would become operative only if SB 65 of the 2019–20 Regular Session is enacted and takes effect on or before January 1, 2020.