California lawmaker proposes offering Medicaid to all illegal immigrants
The legislation is being introduced ahead of the very progressive Governor-Elect Gavin Newsom entering office.
California is doubling down on #Resistance, as lawmakers in Sacramento are once again toying with offering healthcare services to illegal immigrants.
Earlier this year, we recounted that the state’s progressive politicians were pushing a free healthcare program that would include those who are not lawfully in this nation. Now, a measure to offer Medicaid to all illegal immigrants in the state has been introduced in the California State Assembly.
State Assembly member Joaquin Arambula’s bill would make California the first state to give Medicaid coverage to people regardless of immigration status. The state already provides Medicaid coverage to illegal immigrants under the age of 19, the Washington Examiner reports.
Arambula’s plan is estimated to cost $3 billion a year and could cover 1.2 million of the state’s 1.8 million uninsured illegal immigrants.
Two state senators are poised to introduce similar measures shortly. Currently, only the children of illegal immigrants can participate in the state’s Medicaid program.
Currently, immigrant children without legal status are eligible for Medi-Cal benefits under the Health for All Kids Act, which was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown in 2015. Lara is the author of the legislation, which now covers more than 200,000 children.
California is also providing limited Medi-Cal benefits including pregnancy and emergency care to undocumented immigrants 19 years old and above.
The California Immigrant Policy Center supports legislation to expand Medi-Cal benefits to undocumented immigrants. Its spokesman, Carolina Gamero said, “It’s something that is urgently needed across immigrant communities in California. The longer that we wait and the longer we keep up this unjust exclusion, it’s really setting back California.”
Part of the rationale for the bill’s timing is that California’s Govenor-elect, Gavin Newsom, is anticipated to continue efforts to evolve the healthcare system in this state into “single payer”.
The legislation is being introduced ahead of a new governor entering office. Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom initially had vowed to seek a single-payer healthcare system for the state, but tamped down his rhetoric later in the campaign, focusing instead on extending coverage to the uninsured….
…The latest plan would carry an estimated price tag of $3 billion a year, according to California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, which would be paid for by the state’s general fund. Medicaid is otherwise jointly funded by the state and federal governments.
There is some good news to be had: Illegal immigrants are likelier to flock to the Golden State, providing fiscal relief to the states they abandon.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Great job, California! Ignore all of the homeless, addicted, illness-riddled CITIZENS living on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles and spend your hard-earned TAXPAYER dollars on ILLEGAL ALIENS, who are CITIZENS OF OTHER NATIONS. No wonder our hospitals are overrun and medical costs have risen exhoribtantly and diseases America had long ago thought were in abeyance have resurfaced!
I was just thinking, “So, they basically want to see how quickly they can force their state to declare bankruptcy?”
Are they talking Medicaid or MediCal? Do states have the authority to ignore federal law on who qualifies?
Phil – even MediCal contains Fed $$$ –
which will need Fed authorization!
Medi-Cal IS the Medicaid program in California. Not two different programs.
Actually, I just turned 65 this year and the first thing you do is sign up for MediCare. MediCal it the CA version of Medicare for Part B. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be bailing soon enough. I’ve gone without health insurance for over 8 years and I’m healthy enough to make that work. MediCare costs nothing and I still think it is cheaper for me to do without Part B. All I want it my annual check-up and it is cheaper to pay out of pocket up front. I use an independent service to evaluate my regular blood tests that track several bio-markers telling me far more than any routing physical. That’s the advantage of being healthy.
“Medi-Cal is California’s Medicaid program.” — California’s Health Care Services website. Medi-Cal has nothing to do with Medicare.
Best as I can tell, when it comes to illegal aliens, blue states have the authority to do whatever the hell they damn well please. No one seems to be stopping them – least of all the DOJ.
CA NEEDS A YELLOW VEST MOVEMENT. https://youtu.be/k0GHWSi_cXY
Both of them. CA California and CA Canada to get rid of Trudeau.
A self-inflicted Cloward and Piven moment. All we need is for Trump to declare only California is a sanctuary state and press hard for ICE to shake out all of the other states.
This will be MediCal and it will break the medical system in the state… there will be a single payer and no medical community left intact after cost shifting the burden to medical professionals.
All of this is based on an infinitely large bank account that only the very best of good times could even approach covering. An economic blunder the likes only AOC couldn’t see coming.
Can we be assured with 100% certainty that the federal government will NOT “bail out” California when it goes bankrupt? If the answer is “yes” then I say “more power to ya’… go for it!”
that is the double down that CA is counting on – much more likely bigbiz leaves and fed bases move.
It’s “too big to fail.”
“…estimated price tag of $3 billion a year”
Was this estimate made by the same people who estimated the cost of the train fiasco?
It really doens’t matter. CA is already far beyond the ability to ever pay off its commitments. Most income taxes are collected from the wealthy voters and capital gains are a major part of that. Something like 60% of voters don’t pay CA income taxes at all. So with the middle class emigrating and illegals mostly on welfare and growing, the state is going to implode.
I don’t see how the federal government can bail out the 5th (or 6th) largest economy on earth. CA is a big market with global implications. States can’t default on their debt but…. if I were retired or planning on retiring on a CA pension, I would be very worried. The math doesn’t lie.
This isn’t your normal ebb and flow of an economic cycle. This is outright out-of-control incompetence or worse, deliberate destruction.
All they have to do is shut down the Fire Stations, sell the Fire Trucks, etc and they will have all the money they need for the new American Democratic Voters….oh wait, they have already done that……….
How very monotonic.
California may find itself in a state of medical crisis. Many physicians are left leaning, but many also have significant debt burdens and literally can’t afford a low salary. There was a discussion on a physician’s board with a rumor that CA was going to force physicians to accept medicaid; many physicians were planning on leaving the state if that does happen. Right now, in most states, patients with medicaid have issues finding providers. The reality is that for most practices, unless receiving other government subsidies, medicaid does not cover costs. The issue of breaking the state is one side of the equation — breaking the healthcare system is the other.
Several years ago a Rand study or some such noted that medical professionals account for about 10% of the cost of healthcare. Even if enslaving them… it only knocks 10% off the top.
The system is so ratcheted down now. When I practiced full time in Cali, we had commercial contracts that only paid 40% of Medicare rates. I often think Progs believe young adults will enter medicine and practice no matter what the earnings. I predict that California will require future medical school grads from state schools to practice in California permanently or face surcharge for leaving state. This is similar to what JFK considered in the 1960’s… go to med school and the government tells you where to work, and how much they will pay you.
Medicine is one sector where the capitalist apologists suddenly turns full socialist when they are concerned about their health. There is a threshold below which medicine can no be “cheapened”. Need a new set of bolts for that 737 engine to attach to the wing.. choice.. Ace Hardware or Boeing?
I doubt any of them has considered the fact that this means all people, anywhere in the world, who figure out that an airplane ticket is cheaper than the cost of their health care, will flock here for the cost of that ticket.
California can do anything it wants as long as it pays for it itself.
CA may become 1st state KICKED OUT OR MARSHAL LAW DECLARED DUE TO BANKRUPTCY – not chap 11.
Martial law.
Revert back to territorial status with no Congressional voting rights until self-sufficient and paid off debts.
Anybody know if the Federal taxpayers on the hook for the usual Federal share of the Medicaid program including covering the illegals? I could see where maybe the last administration put that into the regulations, or looked the other way. Will the Trump administration pay the Federal share or are the Illegals excluded? And are the Feds auditing Medi-Cal to determine that Illegals aren’t being paid for by Fed Funds (if excluded)?
Leftist insanity becomes exponential, until everything blows up. But Cloward-Piven is designed to do just that.
Gavin Newsome is a freak. He makes jerry brown look normal.
The government of Crazifornia seems to think that you don’t run out of money as long as you still have checks.
They are playin “F**k the System.” They hope to ruin CA, and thereby the US.
“If you want less of something, tax it. If you want more of something, subsidize it.”
Mexifornia’s going all out for illegals.