California Medicaid Soon Open To All, “Papers or No Papers”
Cost estimates have already doubled since last May: “the department estimated that the age 26-49 expansion would cost the state $1.2 billion in 2023-24, nearly double the previous cost estimate of $635 million.”
California is facing a crushing budget deficit necessitating a state budget freeze.
Budget freeze for lawful residents, that is.
For years California has been expanding Medi-Cal to old and young illegal immigrants, as this December 2022 announcement from Gavin Newsom’s office reflected:
Today, Governor Gavin Newsom and the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) announced that roughly 286,000 older adult Californians are receiving full scope Medi-Cal thanks to the expansion of comprehensive preventive care and other services to all income-eligible adults 50 years of age and older, regardless of immigration status. This follows Governor Newsom’s action in July 2021 to enact this expansion in collaboration with Senator María Elena Durazo and Asssemblymember Joaquin Arambula in the 2021-22 state budget.
This latest expansion of Medi-Cal coverage brings California closer to Governor Newsom’s promise of universal access to health care coverage, regardless of age or immigration status.
“We’re making sure that universal access to health care coverage becomes a reality here in California, and this expansion has gotten us one step closer – more than a quarter million undocumented Californians aged 50 and older now have good, quality health care,” said Governor Newsom.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the last hole in universal coverage, people aged 26-49, is being filled in the New Year, and the expansion is being aggressively marketed, Medi-Cal will soon be open to all, ‘papers or no papers.’ She wants her neighbors to know:
As parents hustled to pick up their kids from a school in South Los Angeles, Juana Dominguez greeted one after another with the same question in Spanish: “Do you have Medi-Cal?”
“Don’t be afraid to get it,” she urged mothers pushing strollers in the afternoon sun. She paused to chat up street vendors hawking raspados and hot dogs, encouraging them as well, as she handed out fliers….
It’s the culmination of a steady expansion of the California health insurance program, which has already grown to include children, young adults and seniors regardless of their legal status. As of last year, the uninsured rate among immigrants in California without U.S. citizenship was estimated to be 21% — lower than in 36 other states, according to a KFF analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Next year, California will extend Medi-Cal benefits to the last remaining group of undocumented people — those ages 26 to 49 — in what is expected to be its biggest expansion of coverage since key provisions in the Affordable Care Act were implemented in 2014. State officials have estimated that more than 700,000 people will be eligible to gain “full scope” coverage for the first time, helping them access important services such as preventative care and treatment for chronic conditions….
California officials have estimated that more than 700,000 people will be able to transition from “restricted scope” to “full scope” Medi-Cal next year. Being in “restricted scope,” which helps reimburse hospitals for emergency care, means “they’re in the system, we know who they are … we know that they’re income-eligible for Medi-Cal,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of the healthcare consumer advocacy group Health Access California.
“It is an incredibly useful way to automatically enroll” people who will now gain coverage for a range of care needed beyond the emergency room, Wright said. “We’re really glad the state has taken efforts to try to do this as automatically and seamlessly as possible.”
California’s Department of Health Care Services said it’s unknown how many people who aren’t already in the “restricted scope” program will be newly eligible for Medi-Cal. The state has budgeted $1.4 billion for the expansion this fiscal year and $3.4 billion annually when it is fully implemented.
California is breaking new national ground with this expansion, as The San Francisco Chronicle explains:
Although Medicaid is a federal-state program, states cannot use federal funds to pay for full-scope Medicaid for non-citizens without what the state calls “satisfactory” immigration status. California, however, has been using state funds to phase in full-scope Medi-Cal for undocumented immigrants who meet its income and other requirements.
Coverage was expanded to children lacking permanent legal status through age 18 in 2016, to young adults 19 through 25 in 2020 and to adults 50 and older on May 1, 2022. As of August, about 670,000 people gained full coverage thanks to those three expansions combined, according to the California Legislative Analyst’s office.
Starting Jan. 1, adults between 26 and 49 will also qualify regardless of their immigration status, which could cover an estimated 700,000 more people.
Before they could get full Medi-Cal coverage, undocumented immigrants could get restricted-scope Medi-Cal, which is generally limited to emergency and pregnancy services.
Other states have expanded full Medicaid coverage to certain undocumented groups, but California will be the first to extend it to all, said Jennifer Tolbert, director of state health reform with KFF, a nonprofit organization focused on health care.
Does anyone think these budget estimates will hold? The previous estimate, just last spring, already has doubled The Chronicle reported:
As of May, the department estimated that the age 26-49 expansion would cost the state $1.2 billion in 2023-24, nearly double the previous cost estimate of $635 million.
Expect the actual costs to double or triple or quadruple once implemented, making California even more unlivable for the people “with papers.”
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Comments
Cloward-Piven Strategy?
CA has over 2 million illegal alien residents, with thousands pouring in daily.
This a lie. California has way more than two million illegal aliens.
I wrote “over” 2 million. Difficult to get accurate headcount. Once source says it was 2.75M, but it declined to 2.3M? Personally I believe its under-reported. How do you measure?
Those estimates are not even close. Not even in the ballpark.
Yale modeling study says double previous estimates?
https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twice-as-many-undocumented-immigrants-as-previous-estimates
Reply to smooth:
That 11 million number was accepted by the treasonous illegal supporters back when McShame was trying to force them on us, back in 2006. And then the number didn’t change for years and years and years.
If McShame and the dirtbags with him accepted 11 million back then it meant that the real numebr, THEN, was at least 2 or 3 times that much. And that was back in 2006. The number now is north of 40 million in the nation, for sure. Easily.
Back when Reagan was rolled on illegals they swore that there were less than 300,000 they were going to “legalize” … but the real number came in at just under 3,000,000. And then they just opened the border even more after that.
But that 11 million wasn’t all “in California,” was it?
Why would it decline? I can’t find any stories indicating illegals are moving to other states although I wouldn’t be surprised in that. The amount pouring over the border now should make up for any number that are leaving.
With CA as the biggest state with the largest population of illegal aliens, and all the inducements of the sanctuary state, add 1M to the official numbers? Its rapidly accelerating. They know this could be the last year of open borders if biden loses, so they are rushing the border now in the dead of winter, which is typically slower season. Then there is the free medical care from 2024, which is the greatest inducement in the world, literally.
Remember for the last few decades they keep trying to tell us we only have 10 to 12 million illegals in the entire country. They’re underestimating the numbers on purpose
I say let Newsom do what he wants to do, but not a dime of federal tax dollars should go into this misguided program. Sooner or later the good people of California are going to get the message.
Hair Gel obviously hasn’t considered what’s going to happen when health care providers start fleeing the state in large numbers,. Bet on it.
Hair Gel obviously hasn’t considered what’s going to happen when he has to cut benefits to the blacks to fund the benefits given to the illegals. It ain’t gonna be pretty. Bet on it.
Newsom has 2 more years in office. Then, he is di di mau. Only 2 places he can go — Senate or President / VP. Worth the risk of a complete debacle because it is unlikely he would still be the boss when that occurs.
Hair Gel has no idea the misery of tracking and verifying addresses of phantoms the administrative employees are going to deal with.
SCDHHS experienced great misery when Hillary Clinton pushed the Partners for Healthy Children and CHIPS…Childrens Health Insurance Program.
South Carolina is 1/8 the size of Cali with far less “phantoms”.
The fees for doctors and other practitioners are pretty low, and with the massive deficits there are fee cuts on the way. Insurance companies that offer employer based coverage, or Medicare advantage plans are taxed, audited, fined and taxed again.
The docs who are old enough to retire will retire. Younger ones who can move will move. But most will just work their schedule and go home, so what if waiting time is 3 months for an appointment. The “lawmakers” will let pharmacists and low level nurses to do more and more to give the appearance there is care to be gotten. But, would YOU want to get it?
An excellent analysis
This sort of reminds me of the whole thing with the Canadian system where anyone who can afford to go elsewhere to get their coverage does rather than use the free healthcare provided by the government.
To all of you who played by the rules…. SUCKER!!!!
There isn’t enough capacity to ‘just give ’em benefits’ and he’s giving full-boat, full prescription, transgendering and transplanting care too. If you think waiting time and co-pays are absurd now, well just see what happens. Imagine the paradise a clinic looks like to a sick illegal alien, there won’t be any time for you!
Unfortunately, in the shadows NY Governess has already done most of this, expect it to happen to you if you live in a very blue state. Suckers, indeed. This is disgusting.
Anyone in government who is working for illegals – taking money from citizens to give to illegals – is a traitor. And that includes all of the despicable, lowlife pieces of sh*t who vote for these traitors, too.
It is illegal for anyone in the American government to be working for aliens. The American government is only for Americans and those we might invite to come to America. No one else.
We really need a national divorce. Leftists cannot be lived with. Period. They have absolutely no redeeming qualities, at all, and I don’t want to be associated with them in any way, shape, or form.
Free stuff for all illegal aliens. That will reach the hearts and minds of middle America. Newsom can never decide if he wants to act moderately insane or not. So much for POTUS dreams.
CA cities already resembling 3rd world ghettos. That’s going to accelerate.
They ARE third world ghettos.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair | December 25, 2023 at 6:54 pm
We really need a national divorce. Leftists cannot be lived with. Period. They have absolutely no redeeming qualities, at all, and I don’t want to be associated with them in any way, shape, or form.
————–
OK. So why they hell are you still here? Why the hell don’t you move to Canada or anywhere else like the Leftists said they would do when Trump got elected? Why not? Because you are a coward. Just like all the Leftists who said they would leave America if Trump was elected, You are just like them. All talk and no walk. Disgusting. I have absolutely no respect for losers like you just like I have no respect for the Leftists.
You’re talking past each other.
National divorce isn’t “leftists stay and I move”, the same way “I’m leaving the country if Trump wins”. National divorce is “leftists get the cities, and leave the rest of us alone, and we live in different areas of the existing US, under different rules.
We put borders around blue cities, and keep the rest of America great, while they figure out exactly how they’re going to feed and police themselves. They can tax the prisoners in their cities to death, and we’ll run a legitimate constitutional republic that outcompetes them.
There are certainly a lot of us that have walked the walk over the past 4 years, and moved out of the slave states into the free states. For those people stuck in the slave states, I can definitely sympathize with the idea of partitioning those states into slave counties and free counties.
LOL. You don’t seem to understand what a national divorce means. Your English comprehension is pretty poor. It doesn’t mean that I have threatened to move to another country. It means that I want to be free of the leftists vermin and idiots like you, and so this country shall be split. The cities for you and your leftist scum and the rest of the country for Americans.
If there were a country that embodied Americanism and my values I would be happy to move there. There is none. America is unique in the world, which is what the left really hates about it. For the left, they claim that America is evil and awful and that every other country in the world is a better, more moral place than America. Leftists have tons of choices to go to – countries that they say are better than America. American conservatives have nowhere to go. There is no alternative to America. There never has been.
You are pretty dense so I don’t expect that you’ll understand this comment. You certainly didn’t understand the last one.
Why would Primordial care about having your respect?
$68B budget deficit. With aging boomer demographic and unfunded public sector pension. But at least limousine libs in CA will have labor to clean their toilets and pick the crop?
They just won’t pay what’s billed and the hospital is stuck with it.
The state won’t pay what’s billed so the hospitals will jack up the cost of medical care even higher than it already is for the rest of the people not on welfare CA medicare to cover the losses incurred from taking welfare patients. Guaranteed.
“Medi-Cal funding sources. In FY 2021–22, Medi-Cal was financed 70% by the federal government, 21% from the state general fund, and 9% using other state and local funds.”
So the taxpayers in the other 49 states are covering 70% of the cost of health care costs for illegal aliens in CA? Shouldn’t the other 49 states get to vote on that?
No. Didn’t you read it? It says the exact opposite, that federal funds can’t be used for this.
According to California Health Care Foundation, 70% of Medi-Cal is funded by federal sources, and you believe there will be no comingling of assets once that federal money hits sacramento? That’s the equivalent of saying the money that biden wanted to release to Iran won’t be used to fund terrorism because they said so.
No, it is not the equivalent at all, because there is nothing wrong with what the state is doing with its money.
It’s very simple. The federal funds are used for purposes that they’re allowed to be used for. State funds are used for purposes that the federal funds can’t be used for. Yes, of course if the federal funds weren’t available the state would probably use its funds for those purposes, and thus wouldn’t have as much available for the other purposes. Having the federal funds for those purposes for which they may be used frees up state funds to be used for other purposes. So what? That is completely proper and legal and above board. There is nothing illegal or unethical or underhanded about it.
That makes it very different from Biden allowing Iran to use some of its money for food and medicine, and thereby enabling Iran to use other money for terrorism. By doing that, Biden is enabling terrorism, which is bad, By funding the federal portion of Medical, the federal government is enabling the state portion to be funded as well; that is NOT bad. That is the difference.
Wall off California and turn it into West Gaza. Nothing but bombs in Hollywood already.
well played, Monsieur, well played.
Neither Newsom, the Leftists, nor California are going to learn anything from real life. Just ain’t gonna happen. So if they won’t learn we might as well make it as painful as possible for them and let them carry the load. Ship as many hostile foreign invaders as possible from the American border to California in addition to the Leftist cities elsewhere.
Subotai Bahadur
You can as a state offer it, but it will be the professional Doctors and medical personnel who will have to make the delivery of those services. Why would any professional physician want to be inundated with giving services and receive $ .40 on the dollar for those services and then if only if all the paper work involved is filed and then have to wait months to get reimbursement?
No business can stay viable with that type business plan, not even Doctors.
And as such do not even have to accept any insurance for services.
We can guess where and on whom the DIE med school graduates will be practicing.
Some taxpayer group in California should sue the government for this abuse of taxpayer funds.
On what grounds? The CA legislature is entitled to use taxpayer funds for whatever it thinks is a good thing, subject only to the limits in the CA constitution. There’s nothing in that constitution that says they can’t do this, so it’s not “abuse”.
First of all, illegal aliens everywhere in the US are receiving some degree of free healthcare.. If a woman comes to the ER in labor, or someone presents with a stroke, heart attack, serious infection or injury the person will not be turned away without receiving necessary treatment. It was always clear to me (retired physician) that providing this free healthcare to these immigrants was going to be outrageously expensive.
One of the biggest problems with providing healthcare to indigent people, in my experience, is that many if not most do not avail themselves of the necessary preventive care. Many choose not to be treated for diabetes, high cholesterol or hypertension, or receive prenatal care. If a medical condition does not have obvious adverse effects they assume they are well until they become so ill that they require hospitalization.
I anticipate that the hospitals in California will not be able to keep up with the demand. Illegals with legitimate emergencies as well as non emergency conditions will inundate the emergency rooms, making it much more difficult for legal residents to receive emergency medical care. It will be a disaster.
“It will be a disaster.”
Yes, that is the plan.
And the prescribed solution will be more government.
Paging Cloward-Piven. This tracking yr plan? How we doin?
Undocumented Gomers.
They exploit it to use the emergency room for ALL medical care, knowing that they won’t be turned away if they show up to the emergency room with flu-like symptoms or a cough or other nonsense.
California is being bankrupted by the democrat party’s policies and theft.
America is being bankrupted by the democrat party’s policies and theft. THERE. I fixed it for you.
Hair Gel is banking on the Feds bailing out Cali. He thinks that no matter how bad it gets the Feds will never let it go bankrupt and I don’t think he is far off the mark.
If congressional Republicans had any backbone they’d defund all Medicaid programs that enroll illegals.
They can get emergency care in the U.S. without it. If they want more than that they can go home.
EMTALA is so broadly read that illegals are RARELY turned away at any hospital, particularly public-funded hospitals no matter the lack of seriousness or exigence of their ailment. As a practical matter, there is very little ‘health care’ illegal aliens don’t get for free, particularly in larger urban areas.
It’s quite the contrast compared to how the UK and even Canada treat illegals who try to use their ‘public health’ system. In both countries, illegals are less likely to seek care because they know when they do that while they will likely get treated, they’ll also likely get deported.
The conditional part of your first sentence is the problem. They don’t, and they really don’t want to beat the Democrats on any issue.
Subotai Bahadur
What smart, energetic, engaged people keep getting over time is what they really want. The Feckless-R’s don’t want to win or govern. In our captive party duopoly, they are the only alternative to the Statist-D’s with access to government, through politics. That works out for them. It works out differently for the Statist-D’s, but they still get what they want.
I’ve used that first observation in consulting w/ organizations, and coaching individuals, including, especially, would-be coaches, consultants, and other “change agents.”
— Whatever you want to happen, what they want to happen is what will happen. They’re here; you’re an interloper. There’s more of them, than you, and they know the terrain better.
— Whatever they say, what they do is what matters. Whatever they say they want, what they keep getting is what they want. They may be fooling themselves, even more than fooling you, but even so, the deception is still there.
It turns out politicians want importance without doing the hard things — make what you want more attractive to their grift; governments get traction the more they’re involved with — make what you want produce patronage they want; children who want to feel righteous get co-opted by people who give them a mission — offer them a better way to feel differently good about themselves.
The good news is there’s more rake-off from an economy that works than one that’s crashing; more claim of contribution from guard rails, playing referee vs. player; more pleasant sense of self, and contribution from doing actual things vs. screeching stupidly at impotent others. The “counter” argument can’t seem to make the brilliant case they have.
That’s remarkable.
They can’t do that. Even if they controlled both houses of Congress they couldn’t do it. For federal funding to the states to be conditioned on the state doing what the feds want, there must be three conditions: (1) the condition must be made by Congress, not by the administration; (2) it must be explicit; (3) it must not be coercive.
Congress can use its funding to persuade the states, but not to coerce them. Thus the law that cut 5% of highway funding from states that refused to impose a 55 mph speed limit was only narrowly upheld, because the supreme court said a state could afford to absorb that cut if it really wanted to. But the original requirement of the 0bamacare law, that states that didn’t participate would lose their Medicare funding, was struck down because no state could afford that, so they were being coerced, and Congress can’t do that.
(1) was why Jeff Sessions’ attempt to deny “sanctuary cities” funding from a specific DOJ program was struck down. The amount was small enough that it wasn’t coercive, but Congress didn’t make that condition, and the administration can’t do it on its own. To implement that policy Congress would have had to amend the act authorizing that program to explicitly say that the funds were only available to cities that fully cooperate with ICE.
We will see if Socialism runs out of other people’s money.
On other hand what a selling point to illegals, free heath care to all who can get there, California’s streets are pavedin gold after all.
Just what California needs. If Newsom is elected president, this will happen in all of the USA.
Healthcare for the world!
This is good news for obese, balding sexually confused Mexicans looking to make big changes.
Free health care for illegal aliens would include free gender re-assignment at taxpayer expense, sanctuary state freak show.
If *anyone* in California’s Republican party was even semi-competent, they’d draft a bill that REQUIRED every attorney in California to offer legal services to every person in the state age 26-49, papers or not. Every single person who demanded it from them – at the EXACT SAME reimbursement schedule for doctors. No retainers, no contingency, just billing for hours worked.
Under my bill, lawyers would be REQUIRED to represent any and every client that walked in the door. It would be illegal to turn any client away – ever. They would be required to keep records of every potential client who walked in the door, or who e-mailed, called or texted them. They’d be required to keep a record of their hours billed, and to turn those records over to the state for review/approval/discounting.
Just imagine how much better the lives of the residents of Californians would be idi they could have access to high quality legal representation. For free. It could solve all of California’s problems.
What would that accomplish? CA deep blue state dem super majority one party rule. No bill drafted by republicans would be allowed to pass into law.
Fine then, appeal to the public, engage in guerrilla-style lawfare, publicity campaigns, and get a ballot initiative passed…whatever it takes to make it the law of CA. Lawyers in CA are on the leading edges of the advance of feudalist Marxism in CA and they need to be punished in a systematic and structural way. There is no sane path to reform for CA – the only way to reform CA is to “shoot the moon” and implode the system. If forcing lawyers to take massive pay cuts and endure insanely burdensome regulation, (the way the legislature is forcing doctors and landlords to), then you should welcome it.
CA has surplus of under-employed attorneys who take clients on contingency basis, and do pro-bono work.
Proposing it makes the case — plays out in politics over time. Proposing it where people can see looks like trying to govern, which is why The Feckless-R Party want nothing to do with it any time it comes up.
Proposing it makes the case, just like the radical proposal of appropriations bills and budgets makes the case. How about we do this usual business as business as usual?
The Feckless-R’s don’t allow the alternatives to get proposed. They let The Screaming D’s brand anything that looks like governing as “radical” and “extreme.”
It’s one party state. 62 Democrats, 18 Republicans. The Republicans haven’t even been a significant minority for 20+ years now. The last Republican (and he was a RINO) elected to a significant office was Arnold Schwarzenegger who left the Governor’s office in 2011.
The Dhimmi-crats are unabashedly and brazenly conferring the full benefits and privileges of citizenship upon illegal aliens — driver’s licenses; municipal voting rights, welfare entitlements and healthcare.
Ask a Dhimmi-crat apparatchik when the Party plans on representing American citizens’ interests as zealously as they do those of illegal aliens.
“Health care is a basic human right.”
“Employment is a basic human right.”
“Food is a basic human right.”
Keep going deeper down the rabbit hole, you commies.
I grew up in CA. I left in the 1990s because I saw this shit coming. I will never go back.
Since this is CA, and cannabis is medicine, this means that illegal aliens can get free medical cannabis to help them with their “anxiety” ??